NDIS plans and reasonable and necessary supports 

Becoming a participant does not itself fund anything. What is funded is decided at the planning stage, where the Chief Executive Officer must be satisfied of seven separate matters before a support is included as reasonable and necessary¹. The criteria are cumulative, so a support fails if any one of them fails, and the prior question in any planning problem is which criterion is actually in dispute rather than whether the support would be beneficial.

The principles governing plans

Section 31 states principles that apply to the preparation, variation, reassessment and replacement of a plan, and to the management of funding under it, "so far as reasonably practicable". A plan should be individualised and directed by the participant; should where relevant consider and respect the role of family, carers and other significant persons, and recognise and respect the relationship between participants and their families and carers; should strengthen and build the capacity of families and carers supporting participants who are children, and, where the participant and their carers agree, in adult life; should consider the availability of informal support and of services generally available in the community; should support communities to respond to participants' goals and needs; should be underpinned by the participant's right to exercise control over their own life; and should advance inclusion and participation with the aim of achieving individual aspirations.

These are principles rather than criteria. They shape how the planning process is conducted and inform the exercise of the power, but they are not the test a support must pass.

Two kinds of plan

The Act now distinguishes two kinds. Section 32A(1) provides that a new framework plan is a plan prepared in accordance with Subdivision B; s 32A(2) provides that an old framework plan is a plan prepared in accordance with Subdivision C.

Which a participant has is not decided by the Act. Section 32B(1) provides that the rules may specify classes of participants that are to have new framework plans, and the period within which the CEO must notify participants in the class. The CEO must then give written notice to a participant in a specified class (s 32B(2)), and may give such a notice earlier where the participant requests a reassessment (s 32B(2A)). The CEO may revoke a notice if satisfied it is not reasonably practicable to facilitate the preparation of new framework plans for that participant (s 32B(4)).

An answer must therefore establish which framework the participant is on before applying the plan-content provisions, and must do so from the rules and the notice rather than from the Act alone.

The seven criteria

Section 34(1) is the operative test. For a support to be specified in a statement of participant supports as a general support to be provided or a reasonable and necessary support to be funded, the CEO must be satisfied of all of the following:

• (aa) the support is necessary to address needs of the participant arising directly from an impairment in relation to which the participant meets the disability requirements in s 24 or the early intervention requirements in s 25;
• (a) the support will assist the participant to pursue the goals, objectives and aspirations in their statement of goals and aspirations;
• (b) the support will assist the participant to undertake activities, so as to facilitate social and economic participation;
• (c) the support "represents value for money in that the costs of the support are reasonable, relative to both the benefits achieved and the cost of alternative support";
• (d) the support will be, or is likely to be, effective and beneficial, having regard to current good practice;
• (e) the funding or provision "takes account of what it is reasonable to expect families, carers, informal networks and the community to provide";
• (f) the support is an NDIS support for the participant.

Paragraph (aa) is the one that most often decides a case and is the easiest to overlook. It requires a nexus between the support and the specific impairment on which access was granted. A support that would plainly benefit the participant, but which addresses a need arising from something other than that impairment, fails at this paragraph regardless of the remaining six. The note to the subsection fixes the time for testing the requirements as the time the CEO decides to approve the statement of participant supports.

Paragraph (e) is the informal support criterion, and it is a criterion rather than a discretion: the decision must take account of what it is reasonable to expect families, carers, informal networks and the community to provide. The word is "reasonable", not "possible", so an argument that a family member could physically perform a task does not answer it.

Section 34(2) permits the rules to prescribe methods or criteria to be applied, or matters to be had regard to, in deciding whether the CEO is satisfied of any of paragraphs (aa) to (f), so the rules must be checked before the criteria are applied.

The effect of an approved plan

Section 39 is short and consequential: "The Agency must comply with the statement of participant supports in a participant's plan." Once the statement is approved, compliance is an obligation of the Agency, and a dispute about delivery is analysed differently from a dispute about what should have been included.

As at 3 October 2026, the seven criteria in s 34(1) may not give a complete account of the funding an old framework plan carries. Section 34A, inserted by the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Act 2026 (Cth) (No 66 of 2026) and in force from 1 October 2026, provides that, for the purpose of "ensuring the financial sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme", the Minister may by legislative instrument determine a percentage by which funding component amounts are reduced for a specified group of supports². The determination applies either to all old framework plans that commence on or after the day it commences or to a specified class of those plans, so it does not reach a plan that commenced earlier (s 34A(1)(b)). The groups of supports that may be specified are limited to supports for assistance with social, economic and community participation and supports for improved daily living skills (s 34A(1A)), and the determination may exclude a subgroup from the reduction (s 34A(1C)). In making it the Minister must have regard to the safety of participants (s 34A(3)). While the determination is in force, the funding component amount stated in each plan in the class is taken instead to be the reduced amount and the total funding amount is reduced to match (s 34A(2)), although the determination does not alter the text of the plan (s 34A(4)).

A support can therefore satisfy every paragraph of s 34(1) and be specified in the statement of participant supports, and the funding provided for it still fall short of its cost: s 34A(5) provides that a determination has effect even if the funding provided under a plan for a reasonable and necessary support is less than the total cost of the support, or the funding for all such supports taken as a whole is less than their total costs. Section 39 is not amended, and s 34A does not refer to it. The note to s 34A(2) provides that the amounts as reduced are the amounts that have effect wherever the Act refers to a total funding amount or a funding component amount.

Section 47B is not a general right to vary a plan. It applies only where a s 34A determination has started to apply to the participant's plan, has the effect of reducing the total funding amount stated in the plan, and the participant is a high support needs participant, a member of a class of participants the Minister specifies by legislative instrument (s 47B(1) and (2)). Such a participant may ask the CEO to vary the plan. The request must ordinarily be made within 90 days of the determination starting to apply to the plan, unless the CEO extends the period because of exceptional circumstances (s 47B(3)); the CEO first decides whether the participant is a high support needs participant, then whether to vary the plan, and may decide not to vary it (s 47B(4) to (6)). A variation may increase the funding component amounts only for assistance with daily living, home and living, or a further group the Minister specifies, by no more in total than the difference between the original and the reduced total funding amount, and may not increase the two groups a determination can reduce (s 47B(8) and (9)). The decisions the CEO makes on the request are reviewable decisions listed in s 99(1). The Federal Register compilation of the Act dated 19 September 2026 (Compilation No 27) does not yet show these provisions, so they are cited here to the amending Act. These provisions are not yet in force: from 1 February 2027, Schedule 1 Part 6 of the same Act adds a further criterion at s 34(1)(g), that the support is not one that would be more appropriately provided or funded by another scheme or existing government service systems, and inserts provisions on how paragraphs (c), (d) and (e) are applied.

Applying this in a problem question

1. Establish which framework the participant is on, from the rules and any s 32B notice, before applying plan-content provisions.
2. Identify the specific support in dispute and the criterion actually in issue, rather than arguing the support is generally worthwhile.
3. Test s 34(1)(aa) first: trace the need back to the impairment on which access was granted under s 24 or s 25.
4. For value for money under s 34(1)(c), compare against the cost of alternative support, not against cost alone.
5. For s 34(1)(e), argue about what it is reasonable to expect informal networks to provide, not what they are capable of providing.
6. Distinguish a complaint about what was included in the plan from one about the Agency's compliance with an approved statement under s 39.
7. For an old framework plan, ask whether a s 34A determination is in force that applies to that plan (it must have commenced before the plan did) and reduces the funding for a group the support falls in (social, economic and community participation, or improved daily living skills). If it has reduced the plan's total funding amount, ask whether the participant is a high support needs participant who made a s 47B request within the 90 days, and remember that a variation cannot restore the two reduced groups.

Self-check

• Have I treated the seven criteria as cumulative?
• Have I traced the support back to the access impairment under s 34(1)(aa)?
• Have I checked whether rules under s 34(2) prescribe how a criterion is applied?
• Have I distinguished the plan-content question from the s 39 compliance question?
• Have I checked whether a s 34A determination applies to this plan and to this group of supports, rather than assuming funding is reduced even though the support satisfies s 34(1)?