I'm 99% positive that council tax exemption is only for full time students.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/mar/18/career-science-studentship-phd-application

Judging by this, and what I'm hearing from my own university, the numbers of applicants are much higher than the OP suggests because both overall number of applicants has rocketed thanks to the recession and there are fewer funded places. My suspicion is that numbers will be higher for projects that are already defined as it's more like a standard job application, than those where the applicant has to propose a project themselves and work with a prospective supervisor.

I'm guessing from the number that this is the ESRC (economic and social research council) DTCs - if so the list is here (note it's more than 21 universities as most are in consortia):
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/funding-and-guidance/guidance/postgraduates/doctoral-training-centres.aspx
Other research councils I think are also looking at concentrating funded PhDs in a smaller group of DTCs like the EPSRC do already.
Other universities can still offer PhDs in those academic areas but the training they offer was not considered strong enough to merit these research councils funding students there.

The ESRC decision has been very controversial, as it's cut out pretty much all post 92 universities along with some pre 92 ones from funding, and people say that it will be very hard for such universities to gain recognition in the future because they will have had 5 years with no institutional requirement to fund good social science research methods training, and in these straitened times, that means they probably would cut it.

I think the Financial Times do a specific ranking looking at MBAs - that might be helpful as it's specifically looking at postgraduate teaching even if it's not the precise course you've applied for. I'd ignore the undergraduate newspaper rankings as much of their basis e.g. A-level points scores is irrelevant to you. You could also look at the RAE results to get an idea who is rated on research grounds. www.rae.ac.uk

The places that are usually deemed the best aren't on your list, but I will say that I don't think management is a particular strength of Sussex and I would imagine several of the others like Durham, Birmingham or Sheffield are likely to be stronger.

Have you thought about going to a careers advisor? I wonder if there might be related jobs that would still be in that area but fit better to your skill set. Could you arrange some work shadowing at a firm doing this type of work to get a clearer idea of what it's really like and whether some roles would suit you better than others? It does sound like this advisor is someone with your best interests at heart from how you describe it even if the message is unwelcome. I think if you've struggled up to this point moving straight into a PhD programme (if you could get a place) is probably a recipe for unhappiness.

I'd agree it's overkill (and something that might suggest eternal student to employers) unless it was something like a research methods training programme, which might strengthen a phD application. I'd get advice from lecturers on this.

I did find that reading more really was important during my own MA, as the more I read the more I was able to see the different ways in which a question could be approached. I think the expectation is that you will be able to draw together more themes and prespectives in a MA essay than was expected in undergrad essays, if that makes sense.

It is dependent on subject area (i.e. whether industrial experience is valued or not) but in most subjects, I think getting a fulltime (and even more permanent) post without a PhD has become very difficult for new entrants even at post 92 universities, who didn't use to be as fixated on the PhD as the entry level qualification as pre-92s.

If you got the PhD and got a job (well assuming there are any jobs around) would you have to churn out publications? I think here the type of employer would be key. I think the government changes on fees, concentration of ersearch funding, doctoral funding etc are going to produce a divide between places that concentrate on the delivery of taught courses and those that still are research-led. So the amount of research expected might vary a lot more in the future between institutions. That's just my guess though.

The benefits are more obvious in the sciences, where you do get an extra body in the lab. For others though, it's only worth taking on a strong unfunded student for career purposes as they definitely don't get any money for it. A weak student would be unattractive, as there's unlikely to be any publications, and a student who fails is a blot on a career.

Hi,

As the ESRC has scrapped the open competition and concentrated funding in 21 doctoral training centres, your first step has to be to check whether your preferred university has actually got funded places available for a relevant pathway for your topic. Some studentships have been reserved by the ESRC for certain types of PhD eg advanced quants-based topics and language-based area studies, but other than that it seems to be up to the DTC to decide how they should be allocated. As there are fewer studentships available than ever before and concentrated in far fewer places, my gut feeling is that it will be pretty competitive. It will almost certainly not be up to your supervisor - normally even if they are on the committee, they would be expected to excuse themselves on grounds of conflicting interests for the discussion of your application. Their help comes in trying to make sure the proposal, references etc are as strong as they can be.

Does your university have a student financial advisor? If so, s/he might be worth contacting. Even if officially there are no emergency loans, there may be some discretionary funds plus the ALF someone has already mentioned. I also think you need to be absolutely up front with your supervisor about this problem. Lay it out in detail however embarassing it is. You need this money otherwise your fieldwork collapses - that's a threat to your PhD that needs dealing with. If your supervisor is hopeless, then is there someone with overall responsibility for research students in your department or school? I think you have to present it as a practical logistics problem. Not least because if you go without this stuff then presumably we're talking health and safety risks.
Do you know anyone who is into walking / climbing etc that you could potentially borrow anything from? Borrowing items of equipment might be an easier ask from comparative strangers than money.

Sociology OP by any chance? Not my discipline but at joint research training events I used to get a lot of this from mature sociology PhD students. I think there are pros and cons of doing a PhD young (and I was late 20s but looked younger when I did mine so got hit from obth sides or benefitted alround depending on how you look at it). If you are younger, you tend to have fewer personal ties and so can be much more flexible. This helps with the networking, conference going and eventual ability to relocate for the few jobs on offer. The downside I think is that succeeding in a PhD means you have to be quite tenacious and resilient and able to take criticism, and those are things that I know personally I'm better at now than I was in my early 20s. But that doesn't mean all mature students are good at those things - and on your point on judgement I have known teenagers with great judgement and people in their 50s without any... Yes your age is probably an issue in how your interviewees respond to you but so would gender, ethnicity, disability and any number of different personal characteristics. Why not turn it into an interesting methodological discussion? But above all, don't let these people mess with your self-confidence - if they are really getting to you, then that's bullying and needs to be discussed with your supervisor.