Continuity of reasonable adjustments in study

Short answer

There is no automatic legal rule that says your existing reasonable adjustments carry over unchanged when you change course, department, campus, study mode, or repeat a year. What actually happens is governed by the ongoing duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, which is anticipatory and continuous. In practice this means your right to reasonable adjustments continues for as long as you remain a disabled student at the institution, but the specific adjustments may need to be reviewed and re-tailored to your new situation. They do not simply lapse because you have moved, but nor are they frozen in a fixed form that must be applied identically forever.

The legal basis

Under the Equality Act 2010, a university or college is a responsible body owing a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students. This duty arises whenever a provision, criterion or practice, a physical feature, or the absence of an auxiliary aid puts a disabled student at a substantial disadvantage compared with students who are not disabled. Schedule 13 of the Act sets out how this applies in the education context.

Two features of the duty are important here. First, it is an anticipatory and continuing duty. The provider is expected to keep thinking ahead about the needs of disabled students generally, not just react once. Second, the duty attaches to you as a disabled student while you are studying with the provider, not to one particular course or building. So if you change course, department or campus but remain enrolled as a student of the same institution, the duty continues to apply to your new circumstances.

The duty is not to keep providing the identical package regardless of context. It is to make adjustments that are reasonable in your current situation to remove the substantial disadvantage. A change of circumstances can therefore change what is reasonable, in either direction.

How this works in the scenarios you describe

Changing course or department. Your entitlement to adjustments continues, but the adjustments should be reviewed because the teaching, assessment methods and physical environment may differ. Some adjustments will transfer directly, for example extra time in examinations, assistive software, or a particular note-taking arrangement. Others may need to change, for example if the new course has laboratory, placement, clinical or fieldwork elements that raise new access issues. You should not be required to start again from scratch or re-prove your disability if the evidence is already held, unless your condition is one that fluctuates.

Changing campus. The provider must consider physical access and any auxiliary aids or services at the new location. If your previous adjustments depended on features of the old campus, equivalent arrangements should be made at the new one. This is exactly the kind of foreseeable situation the anticipatory duty is meant to cover.

Changing study mode, for example full-time to part-time or on-campus to distance or blended learning. Adjustments should be reviewed against the new mode of delivery. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator’s good practice framework specifically notes that where teaching methods change, for instance from modular examinations to a final-year project, the provider should discuss the change with the student and review whether existing arrangements are still appropriate. The same logic applies to a change of study mode.

Repeating a year or a module. Your adjustments should continue for the repeated study. Repeating a year does not remove your disability or your entitlement. If anything, the provider should ensure the same or equivalent support is available for the repeat, and should consider whether additional adjustments are needed given the circumstances that led to the repeat, particularly if disability-related difficulties contributed to your original result.

Reviewing rather than reapplying

Good practice, as set out by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, is that providers should keep adjustments under review and should not insist that a student reapplies for the same adjustments every year unless the condition is likely to fluctuate. Adjustments are assessed case by case. So the ideal position is that your existing study support plan or learning support agreement follows you and is updated to reflect the new course, campus or mode, rather than being cancelled and rebuilt.

In reality, universities often ask disabled students to confirm or update their support plan at the start of each academic year or when circumstances change. That is administratively legitimate as a review, but it should not be used as a barrier or as a reason to withdraw support you still need. If your medical evidence is already on file and your condition is stable, you should not have to obtain fresh evidence merely because you changed course.

Where the adjustments might legitimately change

There are some situations where the specific adjustments can properly differ in your new circumstances. What is reasonable depends on the resources of the provider, the effectiveness of the adjustment, practicability, and cost, so an adjustment that was straightforward on one course may be assessed differently on another. In addition, the Equality Act does not require a provider to make reasonable adjustments to a competence standard itself, that is a genuine academic or professional standard that everyone must meet. If your new course has different competence standards, for example a course with a clinical or practical competency, the adjustments will focus on the way those standards are assessed rather than on lowering the standard. This can mean the adjustments look different from those on a more essay-based course.

Disabled Students’ Allowance

If any of your support is funded through Disabled Students’ Allowance rather than provided directly by the university, note that DSA is separate from the reasonable adjustments duty. DSA support is generally tied to your student finance for your course of study. If you change course, transfer, or repeat a year, you may need to tell Student Finance England and your needs assessment may need updating, and repeat years or changes of course can affect funding entitlement. It is worth checking your DSA position separately whenever you make a change, because the university’s Equality Act duty and your DSA are two distinct sources of support that do not always move in step.

Practical next steps

1. Tell the disability or student support service in advance of the change, ideally before it takes effect, so adjustments can be reviewed and put in place in time.

2. Ask for your existing support plan or learning agreement to be transferred and updated to the new course, department, campus or study mode, rather than cancelled.

3. Confirm in writing which adjustments will carry over unchanged and which are being reviewed, and ask what evidence, if any, they actually need. Point out that fresh medical evidence should not be required for a stable condition already documented.

4. Flag any new access issues specific to the change, for example placements, labs, fieldwork, a new building, or a shift to a final-year project or dissertation.

5. If you are repeating a year, ask for the adjustments to apply to the repeat and raise whether disability-related factors in your original attempt should be taken into account.

6. Check your DSA and student finance position separately with Student Finance England if any of your support is DSA-funded.

If support is withdrawn or not provided

If the university refuses to continue reasonable adjustments after a change, or lets support lapse and you are put at a substantial disadvantage, that may be a failure of the reasonable adjustments duty. The usual route is to raise it first with the disability support service, then use the internal complaints procedure. If the internal complaint is not resolved, you can bring the matter to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, which reviews student complaints against most higher education providers in England and Wales. Separately, a claim for disability discrimination in higher education under the Equality Act 2010 can be brought in the County Court, which has strict time limits, so take advice quickly if that becomes relevant. In most cases, early written engagement with the support service resolves the issue without any of that.

Key missing facts

The precise answer depends on whether you are staying at the same institution or transferring to a different one, whether your condition is stable or fluctuating, whether the new course has different assessment or competence standards, and whether your support is provided directly by the university or funded through DSA. If you tell me which of these applies, I can be more specific.