My supervisor is currently on maternity leave, and I have been without supervision for 7 months. During this time I had some supervision at a partner university with whom I do a Joint PhD. During this time my work changed a lot. I am in an interdisciplinary department, which proves an issue for finding cover for my main supervisor's leave. The current cover has little expertise in my discipline.

I asked the department to provide me with sufficient cover, which could not be arranged within the department itself and I will have to change department. This means I will change supervisor for the remaining duration of the PhD, which I feel is best for my research focus and career as the new department has more resources.

I am now however in dispute with my supervisor on leave, who does not support me changing supervision, but is also not coming back for another 5 months either and insists to supervise me remotely on skype.

The lack of organisation has resulted in my funder potentially pausing funding, until the university provides sufficient support.

Has anyone had similar experience? I am very confused, as I don't want to damage any relationships but also need the support I pay for.

I'm going to guess here that your supervisor is inexperienced, otherwise it seems a bit mad to leave a student without supervision and expect them to just put up with it.

I think Skype supervision should be fine though to be honest. I worked away from my lab for a year and I just had Skype meetings twice during that time and the rest of it was through email every 2-3 weeks. This worked fine for me, but I was in my third year, so I was more checking in than asking for guidance. Of course if you want to use this as a reason to move supervisors because you think this will be beneficial, then you should do so.