Maybe I am being a little harsh, it is hard to tell from my side. Of course to sell a PhD you have to sell the university as well but covering over major cracks like that seems underhanded. The license procedure is out of his hands on one level, but on another he needs to send in a revision to get it going which has been on his desk for months now because he is very busy with his new position as head of department. I feel his new career step has really had detriments to mine and our clusters capabilities as he basically gave up on setting it up when he took his new position. I get that, you have to look out for yourself, but you can't let people flounder in uncertainty. I guess this post also serves as a rant point but honesty is always the best practice and telling me of budget and funding issues is definitely something that should have been clarified when and where possible not just let the budget roll over for the year and to keep that hidden from the cluster. I'm aware his actions might be because he is being held to secrecy by other higher powers, and that this should be aimed at them in that case, but I know that others students and staff in the cluster are very unimpressed and it's not just me (maybe giving me greater self justification on the matter than I am entitled to?)

I am looking for advice on how to address my situation!

I am about to end the first year of my PhD and things haven't exactly been going smoothly. During the interview we were told of the ambitious new research group that we were the first wave of and how we were going to be doing lots of innovative research that also involved working with external organisations including governmental bodies.

We were also told that we would have necessary licenses in place by the time we started. Now a year in its been delayed til probably Christmas but I don't really believe it will happen by then. Our research cluster hasn't even got a name and my supervisor is too busy to assist us in trying to give ourselves a name. This license was key to my fieldwork plans and I've had to change and adapt my project at least 4 times around this already. I have finally got the ball rolling and found ways around the license but as soon as I request funds for field equipment my supervisor keeps putting off the question and trying to change the project. We have 3k each per year as our research budget.

So I make a formal request tagging in my secondary supervisor and the response is that the deadline passed last week. My supervisor has pushed the project to be cost free for the department and when I haven't held that line because I know the funds are there he has withheld the date of the roll over so I don't get the money.

The reason? He recently became head of department and has been told they need to make 21 mil in budget cuts. He admitted to me that he doesnt think my project will suffer without these funds. Thing is my project looks nothing like the one I applied for because he has molded it into something that is becoming less interesting to me by the day. If I put a complaint in (I'm pretty sure what he has done is against uni policy) I am going against the guy with the links to contacts for my project, he has made himself a lynch pin I can't really work around so to moan is to damage our relationship further even though its evident he doesn't respect my opinion enough to be honest with me, I haven't yet done anything untowards that could damage our relationship.

Any advice on how to handle this? I feel like its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.