This week the Minister for NDIS, Stuart Robert, announced more flexibility and choice for participants accessing transport, enabling people to pay for transport from their core NDIS funding.
From March, it will be easier for providers to claim non-labour costs incurred when transporting participants to and from their community activities as funded in their NDIS plan. The NDIS Price Guide and Support Catalogue will be updated so providers can claim for the non-labour costs using three new line items from Monday 2 March 2020.
NDIS participants will be able to flexibly use their plan’s core support funding to claim service provider costs associated with transporting participants to and from NDIS funded community-based activities. These costs – which are in addition to the support worker’s time – are factored at a per kilometre rate and can be claimed by providers as a separate item as part of the support they are delivering to participants
These changes have been introduced in response to feedback from participants and providers about a fair and consistent solution to claiming non-labour transport costs to ensure people with disability can continue to access supports in their communities.
In October 2019 the COAG Disability Reform Council endorsed an approach to improve the provision of transport supports under the NDIS. This included interim measures to increase transport funding for NDIS participants who are significant users of taxi subsidy scheme, and a commitment by the Commonwealth to fully reimburse states and territories for their taxi subsidy schemes for NDIS participants from 1 January 2020 until 31 October 2021. Participants and providers can discuss and agree on non-labour costs, when arranging a service booking, including:
up to $0.85 a kilometre for a standard vehicle not modified for accessibility;
up to $2.40 a kilometre for a vehicle that is modified for accessibility or a bus; and
other forms of transport or associated costs up to the full amount, such as road tolls, parking, public transport fares.
A new price guide with line items and unit prices will be released in the next couple of weeks. Visit the NDIS website here to read more about this announcement.