What is non-compliance?

Non-compliance means not following the NDIS rules and regulations. 

Non-compliance can range from a simple mistake to criminal matters such as fraud. It can be accidental or deliberate.

There are 6 different types of non-compliance:

  1. Error or mistake – a genuine mistake where there is no intention to gain something.
  2. Misuse – using funds in ways that are not consistent with a participant’s plan. 
  3. Conflict of interest – when someone has competing interests because of their duties to more than one person or organisation. A conflict of interest is only non-compliant when it isn’t declared or managed properly.
  4. Dishonest or barely honest behaviour (‘sharp practice’) – practices that are not illegal but are unethical, unscrupulous or not in the interests of participants.
  5. Fraud – intentionally trying to gain a benefit through deception or other means. 
  6. Corruption – a range of criminal offences including breach of public trust, bribery or biased exercise of official functions.

If you think someone might be doing the wrong thing with NDIS funds, you should report it to us.

Our factsheet explains more about non-compliance:

Intentional non-compliance is different to making mistakes

Not all non-compliance is intentional. We understand that many participants, nominees and providers try to do the right thing, but sometimes make mistakes.

Mistakes do happen. We want to help participants, nominees and providers learn how to do the right thing before it escalates and becomes a compliance issue. 

If you have made a genuine mistake, we will work with you to fix it before it becomes a formal compliance matter.

Helping you do the right thing

Addressing fraud and non-compliance in the NDIS is not just about monitoring, investigating and prosecuting people who do the wrong thing.

We also want to help participants, nominees and providers to understand where they might be making mistakes and connect them with the information and resources they need to do the right thing. This includes helping people to identify and report unscrupulous and unethical behaviour. 

We use a range of strategies to address non-compliance within the NDIS including:

  • education
  • calls to action
  • compliance audits and reviews and 
  • reclaiming debts.

When deciding what compliance actions to take, we consider the attitudes, behaviours and actions of the person or business. 

For people who are willing to do the right thing, we aim to make it easy by offering support, education and guidance.

For people who have made a choice to do the wrong thing, we will use a stronger response.

The majority of our compliance work is educating people about how to do the right thing.

Where to get help

For participants and nominees

If you have questions around how to use your NDIS funds, your NDIS planner or LAC can provide advice and support to help you do the right thing. 

There is also helpful information on our website.

Would we fund it?

Our Would we fund it? guides include examples of commonly requested items that we find cause the most confusion. For each item, we explain how we make reasonable and necessary decisions about them and provide an overview of whether or not we typically fund them.

Our guidelines

Our guidelines explain what we need to consider and how we make decisions based on the NDIS legislation and rules.

We have been updating our guidelines to make the language clearer and easier to understand. The new guidelines are written in plain English and include more information about how we make decisions. 

For providers

We have a range of resources to help providers do the right thing including guidance on:

  • making service agreements
  • records keeping
  • making claims 
  • managing conflicts of interest.

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission also has information and guidance on their website to help providers do the right thing including NDIS Practice Standards and the NDIS Code of Conduct

Case studies

This page current as of
16 November 2022
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