I was wondering if anyone could give any advice about when to contact a potential supervisor. I was going to start contacting those who could be potential supervisors next month. Is this too early when I am looking to start doing my PhD next July/August/September time? I dont want to miss the boat and with funding etc taking a while to sort out, I am trying to be prepared as possible.

Any help greatly appreciated :)

As early as possible - as it can take months to sort out funding, especially from a research body, as they often only have bi-annual deadlines for proposals. However, as a lot of universities essentially shut down over summer, your email may become lost in the many that the potential supervisor comes back to after his/her leave/time off from teaching. So it may be good to wait until 2nd week of september or something, so they will actually read it.

I agree- I approached my PhD supervisor right at the beginning of my MSc (October 2007) to start my PhD in October 2008, and this gave us enough time to meet up and talk about the project, put a detailed proposal together, and fire off a few applications for funding. It can also be good to get in there early if the potential supervisor is particularly popular with respect to people wanting him/her to supervise their work- beat the crowd so to speak. A number of people were after a PhD with my supervisor, and part of the reason I got lucky was simply because I got in there first with my project (and then the funding) before she was bombarded with other requests which she either didn't have time to supervise or couldn't obtain funding for. Good luck! KB