The SIL Registration Deadline: Apply Before 1 October 2026

Written by the Provider360 team. Provider360 is Australia’s leading done-for-you NDIS registration and compliance solution, supporting 3,000+ disability service providers nationally. SIL registration is currently our highest-volume workload, so we read this instrument the way our clients have to: for what it actually requires, and by when.

Last updated: 1 September 2026

Why do SIL providers keep being told they had to be registered by 1 July 2026?

Because 1 July 2026 is the date that got all the attention: mandatory registration for supported independent living and platform providers was announced in December 2025 and commenced on 1 July 2026.

The second date travelled less well. The transition arrangement for providers already delivering SIL sits in the Rules rather than the announcement, and it does not say “registered”. It says “makes an application”. A provider reading only the commencement date concludes the window shut 62 days ago. It is open, and it closes on 1 October 2026. If you are relying on a page or a document you saved earlier this year, check its date before you act on it.

What counts as SIL under the new definition?

Supported independent living is a package of home and living support for people with higher support needs. It is SIL where the person needs support at all times or for most of the day, where the assistance helps them live in their home as autonomously as possible by assisting or supervising daily life tasks, and where the provider manages and delivers the supports.

Two exclusions decide whether this applies to you. It is not SIL if the person receives only a few hours of support a day or a week, and it is not SIL if the person chooses and manages their own support workers.

Where it is SIL, it is registration group 0138, and the Rules attach both the Core Module and the SIL supplementary module to it, on the certification pathway.

What do the Rules actually say about the SIL registration deadline?

The deadline is not a Commission policy setting. It is in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Rules 2018, in the version that commenced on 1 July 2026. For a provider who was already delivering SIL before 1 July 2026, the new requirements apply from one of two days:

(i) in the case that the provider makes an application, before 1 October 2026, … to be registered to provide the specified class of support—the day on which the Commissioner makes a decision … on the application; or

(ii) otherwise—1 October 2026;

In plain English: apply in time and the new SIL requirements attach on the day the NDIS Commission decides your application. Do not apply and they attach on 1 October 2026. Applying moves the date. It does not remove it.

The Commission reads it the same way. Its explanatory document sets out, for a provider not registered but already providing SIL: “must apply to be registered to provide SIL”, and while the application is pending, “may continue providing SIL”.

Is the deadline “before” 1 October or “by” 1 October?

The Rules say before. The Commission’s pathway page for this cohort says both, on the same page: its summary line reads “if they apply by 1 October 2026″, while the operative step describing what the provider must do reads “submits a valid registration application … before 1 October 2026″.

Lodging in September, the difference is immaterial. Lodging on the 1st, it is the whole question. The safe reading is the instrument’s, and the Commission’s own operative step matches it: lodge on or before Wednesday 30 September 2026, which is 29 days away as at 1 September 2026. We would not treat a lodgement made on 1 October as compliant, and nor should you.

Which 1 October deadline applies to you?

Four situations, and only one has 1 October 2026 as its date.

• Delivering SIL before 1 July 2026, unregistered, not yet applied → this is your date: lodge before 1 October 2026 and you may keep delivering while your application is assessed.
• Delivering SIL before 1 July 2026, applied before that date → not your date: you may keep delivering while the NDIS Commission decides your application.
• Registered for group 0115 before 1 July 2026 → not your date, and nothing to lodge: the NDIS Commission varies your registration itself to add 0138, and you keep delivering throughout. The new SIL Practice Standards have applied to you since 1 July 2026 regardless.
• Not delivering SIL before 1 July 2026, and either not an NDIS provider or currently an unregistered provider → no transition at all: no delivery until the Commission decides your application.

Two sentences from the same regulator, opposite outcomes: a provider already delivering SIL “can continue to deliver” while their application is assessed, and a provider who was not delivering SIL before that date “cannot deliver supported independent living (SIL) supports until we’ve made a decision on the application for registration”.

If that is you, nothing unusual happens next. It is the ordinary registration process, in the Commission’s own order: submit a valid application for registration group 0138 and any other relevant groups, receive a scope of audit, engage an Approved Quality Auditor, complete the certification audit, and the Commission decides the application as usual. There is no transition arrangement to shorten it and no shortcut through it.

The Commission publishes six transition pathways. Which one is yours, and what each requires, is the subject of our guide to the NDIS SIL registration transition pathways.

Which date actually binds you

What is not required yet?

If you are unregistered and your application is pending, the SIL Practice Standards do not yet apply to you. The Commission’s explanatory document states it in a table: a provider “may continue providing SIL” and the “SIL Practice Standards do not apply”. The standards page agrees: they “apply to NDIS providers who are registered to provide supported independent living (SIL)”. That is half the picture, because the audit that gets you registered “includes the new supported independent living Practice Standards”. Not required today. Unavoidable before you are registered.

There is also no date by which registration must be complete. The instrument fixes when the requirements attach and is silent on finishing. Silence is not slack: in our experience certification runs 8 to 12 months end to end, and our guide to how long it takes to become an NDIS provider covers the stages.

I’m already registered for 0115. Am I covered?

On the registration itself, yes, and there is nothing to lodge: the NDIS Commission varies your registration to add 0138 for you, and you may keep delivering SIL throughout. The Commission’s journey map for this pathway is explicit: “No action required from the provider.” 1 October 2026 is not your date. The variation should have reached you before 1 July 2026, and June’s notice let providers decline SIL registration, so check your certificate lists 0138. On the standards, not in the way most providers in that position assume. If you held registration for group 0115 immediately before 1 July 2026, the Rules require you to comply with the SIL supplementary module (Module 5A) from 1 July 2026 to stay registered for that class of support, certificate varied or not. The Commission confirms it independently: for a provider registered for SIL, the SIL Practice Standards apply even before the registration is varied. As at 1 September 2026 that obligation has been running for 62 days, and your next audit will assess you against the new standards. Our guide to the NDIS Practice Standards modules sets out what Module 5A contains.

What makes an application “valid”?

“Valid” is the Commission’s own word and it carries weight: the pathway requires a “valid registration application for ‘0138 Assistance with supported independent living’ and other relevant registration groups before 1 October 2026″. A placeholder lodgement is not obviously a valid application.

The order of operations matters more than it looks, and advice in circulation has it backwards. The Commission’s sequence runs: preparation, then apply for registration, and only then “the provider receives a scope of audit”; then the audit, where “the provider engages an Approved Quality Auditor (AQA) and completes a certification audit”; then the decision. You do not need an auditor engaged before you lodge. You need one after the scope of audit is issued.

The Commission’s SIL page, meanwhile, still describes its SIL definition as a summary based on the draft amendments to the Rules and tells providers to refer to the Rules themselves. The amendments were made and the Rules commenced on 1 July 2026. Going to the Rules is what this page has done.

What happens if you don’t apply by 1 October 2026?

Four consequences, in the order they arrive.

1. You must stop delivering SIL. The Commission’s mandatory registration page for SIL says a provider who chooses not to apply “will need to stop providing supported independent living supports”. The explanatory document says the same for a missing or refused application: “must stop providing SIL”.

2. Delivering anyway is an offence. In the Commission’s words: “If you deliver supported independent living on or after 1 July 2026 without being registered, you may breach the NDIS Act. The maximum penalty is 2 years’ imprisonment, a fine of 120 penalty units, or both.” The “may” is the Commission’s own hedge, and we have kept it. The penalty is the Commission’s too, and there is nothing hedged about it.

3. Stopping is not simply stopping. Obligations to your participants attach on the way out, and they differ for an unregistered provider.

4. A refused application lands in the same place. If the application is not approved the provider “cannot deliver supported independent living”. Lodging is necessary. It is not sufficient.

What are your obligations to participants if you have to stop?

If you are unregistered, you notify the NDIA, not the Commission: the Commission’s guidance on stopping the services you provide directs providers to “report permanent and temporary changes by emailing provider.support@ndis.gov.au”. There is no Commission portal notification for you and no registration to cancel, because both belong to registered providers. What does apply is the Code of Conduct: “unregistered providers need to follow the NDIS Code of Conduct when they are stopping some or all their services”.

The participant-facing obligations apply to every provider stopping services. The Commission asks for:

• A transition plan covering how you will notify and support affected participants, identifying the providers available to them, supporting participants to choose their preferred provider, and a risk assessment with mitigation strategies.
• Accessible notification of affected participants: the dates, their options, the next steps and contact details.
• Support through the transition, consulting each participant individually.

Underneath all of it, the Code of Conduct “describes participants rights when their services change”, and “participants must be able to decide who provides their supports and services”.

One caveat on that source. The Commission’s guidance on stopping services was last updated on 16 February 2026. It is standing guidance for any provider stopping services, not something written for SIL, but the routing is the regulator’s own: the current SIL page sends non-applicants to it.

What does a lodged application actually change?

In August 2026 a SIL provider came to us with their invoices frozen: their plan manager would not release payment until they were registered.

The plan manager was right to hold. SIL has required registration since 1 July 2026, no matter how the participant’s plan is managed. What changes a plan manager’s position is not an argument about transition provisions. It is the lodged application, which is documented evidence that you are in the registration pathway. The NDIA puts the same disjunction to participants in its own words: “Your SIL provider must be registered or apply to register, by 1 October 2026.” Its guide for SIL providers carries the same line.

Then there is the queue. Mandatory registration has produced a surge in applications at the Commission, and the number of Approved Quality Auditors processing them has not moved with it. Across the 3,000+ providers we have supported, our pre-audit evidence review catches an average of 16 gaps before the auditor sees the file. The providers who struggle here are not the ones who misread the deadline, but the ones who read it correctly and left the documentation until September.