CGI script won't run on Apache2

I'm running Apache2 on ubuntu 16.04,just installed it all fresh, and trying to run a CGI script on my site! I'm aware apache needs to be configured to run it. I've put my cgi-bin directory in var/www with:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/cgi-bin/

then ran this (although not sure why!):

sudo chown $USER:www-data /var/www/cgi-bin/

Then added these to my apache.conf file:

ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/var/www/cgi-bin/ 

< Directory /var/www/cgi-bin/ > 
    Options ExecCGI <br>
    AddHandler cgi-script cgi pl 
< /Directory >

Essentially when I open my site, some javascript runs jqueries ajax with the CGI script as an argument, and well it's just not running! :(

Sorry for awful formatting of post etc. it's my first, and if anyone needs any other info/attachments please let me know, this is for a big deadline and i'm so close but so far!