What was announced
In December 2025, the Minister for the NDIS confirmed that SIL providers and NDIS platform providers must register with the NDIS Commission from 1 July 2026. The change implements recommendations from the NDIS Review, the Disability Royal Commission, and the Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce, which all identified elevated risk in shared living settings: participants with high support needs, 24/7 rosters, and historically limited oversight of unregistered operators.
Registration brings SIL providers under the full registered-provider regime: Practice Standards audits, suitability assessment of key personnel, reportable incident obligations, worker screening requirements, and Commission oversight. Mandatory registration for support coordination was also flagged but is currently paused. The NDIS Commission's reform hub carries the authoritative transition guidance, treat this page as orientation, not legal advice.
What registration involves for a SIL provider
SIL sits in registration group 0115 (assistance with daily life tasks in a group or shared living arrangement), a higher-risk group on the certification pathway. That means:
- A two-stage certification audit against the Core Module of the NDIS Practice Standards, Stage 1 reviews your documentation; Stage 2 assesses implementation, with staff and participant interviews and site visits to your homes.
- Module 2a in scope for most SIL providers. If any resident has a behaviour support plan, or regulated restrictive practices are used or foreseeable in your settings, the implementing behaviour support plans module applies, with its training, monitoring, and reporting requirements.
- Module 1 where high intensity supports are delivered, enteral feeding, complex bowel care, ventilator management, and similar descriptors common in higher-needs SIL settings.
- Suitability assessment of the organisation and key personnel by the Commission, and ongoing obligations including mid-term audits (~18 months) and three-year renewals.
What it will cost and how long it takes
Certification audits for SIL providers typically land in the $5,000 to $20,000 range depending on the number of homes, residents, and modules in scope, plus documentation and preparation costs, the full breakdown is in our registration cost guide. End to end, certification registrations commonly take four to nine months (timeframe details here).
Both numbers are under pressure from the reform itself: a wave of SIL providers entering the registration pipeline at once, at the same time as several approved quality auditors have exited the market. Auditor lead times are the bottleneck to plan around, quote early, book early.
A preparation plan for SIL providers
1. Confirm your scope
List every support you deliver across your homes: personal care, high intensity supports, behaviour support plan implementation, community access. Map them to registration groups, under-scoping now means a variation application later.
2. Build the documentation system first
The audit is won or lost on documentation: Core Module policies and procedures, incident and complaints systems, risk and restrictive practices registers, rosters-of-care evidence, tenancy and house-level safety documents, and Module 2a implementation records. Writing this from scratch is the slowest path; our 220+ document registration package covers the Core Module and Modules 1 to 5 , including the high intensity and behaviour support implementation documentation SIL providers typically need , in editable Word format. The complete list of what you need is in NDIS policies and procedures.
3. Close the worker compliance gaps
Every worker in a risk-assessed role needs an NDIS Worker Screening clearance, and your training register needs to evidence competency for the supports each worker delivers, including medication, manual handling, and restrictive practices awareness where relevant. In Stage 2 interviews, auditors will ask your support workers how incidents and complaints are handled; brief them properly.
4. Apply, then book your auditor immediately
Submit through the NDIS Commission portal, receive your initial scope of audit, and get three auditor quotes the same week, comparing lead time as hard as price. From there, the standard registration process applies, and our audit checklist covers exactly what to have ready for audit day.
The strategic read
Mandatory SIL registration is disruptive, but it also resets the competitive field: every SIL operator will soon hold the same baseline credential, and the providers who register early, with clean audits and documentation systems that actually work, will be the ones positioned to absorb participants from operators who exit rather than comply. The cost of registering is real; the cost of being unregistrable in a registered-only market is the business.