Nginx error stating connection refused to PHP-FPM port

Found it:

In order to specify the port number you would need to edit the "listen =" directive in /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf however I discovered that it is theoretically more efficient to allow Nginx to communicate over Unix sockets so I swapped

127.0.0.1:9000

with

/var/run/php5-fpm.sock

That was the first step...

I then had to replace the following lines in my sites configuration file (sites-available/default):

fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

with

fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;

And now I am up and running.