The Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Design Standard was recently published on the 28 October 2019 and it provides an accessible list of landmark guidelines to help architects, builders and other members of the community design and build quality specialist housing and ultimately improve the standards of housing construction for people with disability.

The SDA has been released in conjunction with the SDA Innovation Plan and the Limited Cost Assumptions Review working together to serve the purpose of granting eligible participants housing that is better tailored to their needs. It is anticipated that up to 28,000 Australians with disability (equating to approximately 6.1% of NDIS participants) will receive the assistance they require once the SDA market succeeds in branching out completely.

Mr Robert has noted the increase of SDA providers has risen up to 977 (a 12% increase) along with the percentage of enrolled dwellings which have also gone up by 9.5%.

In addition to the design guidelines, there is also a pre-certification stage, soon to be made a compulsory part of the process as a means to ensure specialist houses are up to standard.

The SDA Innovation Plan maps out the ways in which the NDIA will go about motivating participants and providers to come up with new design ideas, paired with the Limited Cost Assumption Review which has led to:

• A rise in Location factors by 4-10.5% for Sydney (City and Inner South, Eastern Suburbs and Inner West) and Melbourne (Inner East, Outer Easter and South East).
• A rise in construction cost assumptions for Fully Accessible (16%) and Robust dwellings (14%).

Read the full article on the NDIS website