If I spend less, will my funding get cut later?

This is one of the most common worries about flexible funding, and the honest answer is that the official record has said two different things.

An earlier DSS fact sheet, published in 2025 before the changes landed, said flexible budgets would be “reallocated based on how much the person has spent in the past (between June 2023 and June 2025)”. That is where the fear comes from, and it was a reasonable reading at the time.

The March 2026 announcements took a different position: allocated budgets “will remain the same as they are now” and “will not be set based on what people spent in previous years”. The April 2026 fact sheet repeats it: your budget continues the same as now.

What both agree on: nothing changed on 1 April 2026, and regular reassessments start again from 1 October 2026.

What no document explains is what a reassessment will actually look at. DSS has not published that. So the accurate answer to “will spending less cut my funding later” is: the current official position is no, budgets are set on need, not spending history. But reassessments are new, and nobody outside DSS has seen one yet.

The practical move: a reassessment is about your needs. If your needs have not changed, say so clearly, and do not let an underspent year speak for you. Unspent funding usually reflects the barriers to using it, not the absence of need. If this worries you, raise it with your NASC before your reassessment rather than after.