Central Coast Council Moves to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Plaguing Its Digital Records This Week

Central Coast Council confirmed this week it is undertaking a targeted audit to remove duplicate images from its digital records system, a problem that has quietly compounded since the organisation emerged from state administration in 2021. The duplication issue, spread across the council's development application portal and its publicly accessible mapping tools, has created confusion for residents lodging planning enquiries and for staff processing building certificates along Mann Street and in the Gosford CBD renewal precinct.

The timing matters. Council is in the middle of a multi-year effort to rebuild its internal systems and public credibility after a financial crisis that forced NSW Government intervention. Digital records integrity is now formally listed as a priority under the organisation's current Integrated Planning and Reporting framework, which sets out council's operational commitments through to 2027. Duplicate images sitting inside live files — some dating back to the pre-amalgamation Gosford City Council era — have the potential to delay development approvals, which directly affects the housing supply pipeline the Central Coast desperately needs.

What the Problem Looks Like on the Ground

The duplication issue surfaces most visibly in two systems. The first is the council's NSW Planning Portal submissions, where uploaded site photographs attached to DA files for properties in suburbs including Woy Woy, Wyong and Gosford itself have in some cases been indexed twice, creating ghost entries that clog search results and slow processing times. The second is the Central Coast Spatial Viewer — the publicly accessible GIS mapping tool — where aerial imagery layers captured in different survey years have been uploaded in overlapping sets rather than replacing prior versions.

Staff at the council's administration centre on Hely Street, Wyong, identified the scale of the problem during a routine system migration in late June 2026. According to council's publicly available ICT procurement register, a contract for digital records management services was listed for renewal in the second quarter of 2026, which appears to have prompted the internal review. The audit is being run in parallel with council's existing Digital Transformation Program, a rolling initiative that has been underway since the 2022-23 financial year.

For residents, the practical impact has ranged from frustrating to genuinely costly. Homeowners in the Kariong and Narara areas who lodged building information certificates earlier this year reported receiving documents with duplicated photo attachments — meaning the same elevation photograph appeared multiple times in a single certificate pack, occasionally pushing file sizes past the 10MB upload limit on the planning portal and forcing resubmissions. Council has not published a figure for how many files are affected, but the audit scope covers records lodged between July 2018 and June 2026, an eight-year window.

What Happens Next for Residents with Files in the System

Council's records team is expected to complete the first phase of the audit — covering active development applications — by 31 July 2026. Archived files relating to completed approvals are scheduled for a second-phase review in the September quarter. Residents with pending DAs in suburbs including Terrigal, The Entrance and Tuggerah who are concerned their files may contain duplicated attachments are advised to contact the council's Development and Environment directorate directly via the Gosford office on Watt Street, rather than waiting for an automated notification.

The broader significance sits within a regional housing context that has very little room for administrative friction. The Central Coast recorded a median house price of around $870,000 in early 2026, according to figures tracked by the Real Estate Institute of NSW, keeping pressure on approval timelines for new dwellings and secondary dwellings that first-home buyers and downsizers are counting on. Every week a DA sits in a backlogged queue carries a real cost.

Council has not indicated whether the duplicate image problem caused any measurable delay to approval processing times, and no formal report has been tabled at a public meeting as of this week. The next ordinary council meeting is scheduled for 22 July 2026 at the Gosford offices on Mann Street, where the ICT audit progress report is expected to appear on the agenda.