Disability accommodation company NDISP shut down leaves investors and contractors scrambling

Australia Broadcast Center

6 days ago

More people have been left scrambling in the wake of a disability accommodation company shutting down operations, including subcontractors, a former AFL footballer and a finance group from Asia.
NDISP, which ceased operating this month, has also faced complaints from investors whose properties it oversaw, and from a parent over the care of his son who has a disability.
The company ran more than 140 disability homes in Queensland before this month transferring the leases to a new company, Sigma SDA, amid a winding up lawsuit from the Australian Taxation Office.
As the ABC reported last week, it faced remonstrations about issues including properties going vacant from retiree investors who owned the homes it managed.
The company argued that dissatisfied investors represented four or five homes out of 150. It maintained the vast majority of investors were happy and the risks were fully disclosed, rejecting any suggestion of misconduct.
The ABC can reveal Wel.co, a Melbourne-based property development group run by former Essendon midfielder and current club vice-president Andrew Welsh has built specialist disability accommodation managed by NDISP, as has Asia-based finance group OCP Asia.
Other investors came via Australia-based funds.
Former soldier Gavin Boggitt has also encountered difficulty with NDISP, whose Townsville-based son Braydon is in a wheelchair with limited speech.
Braydon, 25, was placed in an NDISP administered home in 2023. Since then, Mr Boggitt said he experienced a frustrating lack of communication with the company — he said they were difficult to contact and multiple people would deal with issues.
"You didn't know who to talk to from one moment to the next," Mr Boggitt told the ABC.
The problems, he said, included a lack of grab rails in areas including showers.
At one stage Mr Boggitt said he told NDISP in writing that Braydon would be leaving, but then the decision was made for Braydon to stay. He said when they contacted NDISP to rescind the departure decision, the company staffer was not even aware that Braydon had planned to be leaving.
While Braydon is now in a new home with a new manager, Mr Boggitt said problems still occurred.
Mr Boggitt said the government NDIS was a great system overall, but many things ran slowly, including getting repairs for Braydon's wheelchair after 18 months.
The National Disability Insurance Agency, which oversees the NDIS, said it was boosting the experience for participants via improved processes and increased frontline resources.
A lawn mowing contractor working on NDISP properties also told the ABC of struggles in getting paid for invoices to NDISP and a related maintenance company.
In email correspondence, company staff promised to ensure payments would be made — sometimes a Christmas backlog was blamed, or new employees were involved in training.
At one stage, the contractor said the bill from a related company for outstanding work grew to more than $13,000 late last year. While that was mostly repaid, he said, billing recently shifted to NDISP and he estimated a $6,000 payment has become past due.
While he does have other work, he said the lack of payment stings.
"I've got a family to feed … I've got mortgages to pay," he said.
Asked about client and contractor complaints, NDISP director Darryl Richards blamed issues including an entity the company hired having botched the implementation of a $150,000 enterprise software program for his organisation.
He also lashed out at the introduction of a sector-wide NDIS billing system, which has attracted complaints across the sector in the past couple of years as a "disaster".
He added his organisation "always had multiple qualified accountants running the finance department internally", and payments of subcontractors were handled without NDISP directors being directly involved.
Relationship managers and senior regional staff would have been easily contactable, he maintained.
"They would have organised someone to install rails etc if they were needed," he said.
Among institutional fund backers of specialist disability accommodation was OCP Asia, which in 2022 announced plans to put up to $200 million, potentially as debt, into the sector, eyeing up to 40 homes in a deal involving NDISP.
It ultimately contracted NDISP to run an undisclosed number of homes but has declined to answer questions from the ABC about what happened with its investment.
NDISP also leased multiple properties from Mr Welsh's Wel.co. Mr Welsh declined to comment.
An unknown number of other investors bought homes run by NDIS through funds run by James Brooker's Social Impact Funds Management and Kevin Nolan's DHI Fund Management.
Queensland land title records show nine properties in the state are owned by Sydney-based Boutique Capital, which is the trustee of the funds.
Boutique Capital, which is run by Tim Baker, the husband of TV star Georgie Gardner, did not respond to the ABC's questions.
Attempts to obtain comment from Mr Brooker were unsuccessful.
Mr Nolan said the DHI funds had "two operational SDA buildings now managed by Sigma with seven out of our 10 apartments occupied".
"Please note that DHI Fund Management has not raised capital since 2022 and has no intention to do so," he said.