Checked against the NDIS Commission's website on 23 September 2026 · about 8 minutes to read
Yes, you can get help. The NDIS Commission's registration guidance has a section for providers who use a consultant, an advice service or purchased policies. It does not ban any of them. It expects you to have been substantially involved, to understand what you submit and be able to explain it, and to give responses that are "specific to your organisation and are not a direct copy of purchased documents". It warns that an application repeating the same or very similar material a consultant gives to many providers may be refused. The guidance does not mention AI, and the Commission's renewal page points renewing providers to the same advice.
The guidance is on the Commission's Apply for registration page, in the section headed "Using consultants, advice services or purchased policies to apply for registration". It starts from one principle: you are responsible for the content of your registration application. If a consultant, an advice service or purchased policies helped you, the Commission expects that, in plain English:
Read the list again. Nothing on it forbids help. Every item is about you: your involvement, your understanding, your organisation.
The same section explains the concern. When consultants and advice services give the same or very similar information and advice to many providers, the Commission says this may show that a provider and its key personnel do not understand the relevant Practice Standards. Repeating that material in an application may subvert the quality audit and the Commission's suitability assessment, and it raises the risk that the application contains false or misleading information. The page then sets out what can follow.
Read together, the target is sameness, and answers that do not describe the service. Help is not the target.
After you lodge, an approved quality auditor assesses you against the Practice Standards. SIL registration, group 0138, needs a certification audit (registration groups), and a certification audit has two stages. Stage 1 is a desktop audit: the auditor asks for information and evidence, usually off-site. Stage 2 is onsite: the auditor looks at how you are implementing your policies and procedures, which might include viewing records, visiting your sites, interviewing staff and participants, and observing. The Commission's own account of an audit day says the focus soon moves from what your policies say to what happens in practice (The quality audit process).
So an answer that describes a form nobody uses, or a review nobody holds, is hard to defend once the auditor asks a support worker what actually happens. How the whole process runs, step by step →
Two questions sort every option: who writes the words, and how much of them describes your own service.
And lodge it yourself. It is your application and your declaration.
| What the Commission expects | How your pack handles it |
|---|---|
| Specific to your organisation | Written from a short intake, about 15 minutes, on how your houses actually run. The parts only you know are left in yellow for you to write. |
| Substantially involved | You supply every fact, fill in the yellow parts only you know, and check every answer against your real service in the 7 days after delivery, with unlimited rewrites in that week. |
| Understood, can explain | Each answer comes with what it has to show, and a short "Before you paste this" list to run first. |
| Accurate picture | We will not write an answer describing something you don't do. Where your intake shows a gap, the answer states where you are today and the gap becomes a dated action. |
| Your application | You lodge it yourself, through your own myID login. |
The Commission judges your involvement, which is why the reading, the checking and the lodging stay with you.
Its Apply for registration page, including the section on consultants and purchased policies, does not mention AI (checked 23 September 2026). The expectations it sets are about the content: specific to your organisation, accurate, not a direct copy of purchased documents, and something you understand and can explain. A generic answer does not meet them, whoever or whatever drafted it.
Whoever helped, the Commission holds you responsible for the content and expects you to have been substantially involved in preparing it. SIL Ready does not lodge for providers: you lodge through your own myID login, because the declaration is yours to make.
Under the guidance, the application may be refused, or the Commission can add a condition requiring a new certification audit, Stage 1 and Stage 2, that includes a new self-assessment. The same guidance says giving false or misleading information contravenes section 73D of the NDIS Act and is a criminal offence under section 137.1 of the Criminal Code.
Yes. The Commission's renewal page says renewing has the same steps as your initial application, including a self-assessment against the applicable Practice Standards, and asks you to consider the same advice on consultants, advice services and purchased policies.
The guidance does not ban templates or purchased policies. It expects your responses to be specific to your organisation and not a direct copy of purchased documents, and your policies to accurately reflect how you will deliver supports. A template becomes a risk when it still describes someone else's service, or when it is lodged as it came.
Use the time before your audit. Read every answer against what actually happens in your houses, and bring your records and your workers' practice into line with what you wrote, because Stage 2 looks at how you implement your policies and procedures. How the audit fits into the process →
Checked on 23 September 2026. Every statement on this page about the Commission's rules comes from one of these pages.
SIL Ready writes self-assessment answers for providers, so we have an interest in this question. That is why every statement about the Commission's rules above links to the Commission's own page. This page is general information, not legal advice. SIL Ready is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDIS Commission. Who is behind SIL Ready.