Hi Starshine,
Thank you very much for your reply, it has put my mind at ease 8-)

I am due to start a PhD in October and I was lucky enough to find one with funding. I will be receiving £13650 a year and this will be paid in monthly installments.

My question is, how much of this will I lose a month? I know that I won't be taxed, but what about NI contributions, student loan payback etc?

Any help on this would be much appreciated, as it means that I will be able to start planning for the months ahead.

So what happens if you do not get the funding? Would you then have to attempt to obtain your own through other research bodies?

I was just coming on here to ask exactly the same question!

The other question I had related to this is, if you don't get awarded the funding, what then happens? Do you have to try to arrange your own and if you can't, you don't get to do the PhD? How else could you go about getting funding? I know that I definitely couldn't afford to put myself through!