Central Coast Council Moves to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Plaguing Gosford Renewal Documents

Central Coast Council confirmed this week it has launched an internal audit after staff identified a widespread duplicate-image problem across its online planning and development application portal — a technical failure that has caused confusion for residents, architects and developers trying to navigate documents tied to the Gosford CBD renewal precinct.

The issue matters now because the council is in the final stages of exhibiting revised planning controls for the Gosford City Centre, a project that sits at the heart of the region's post-administration recovery. Hundreds of development application documents lodged through the NSW Planning Portal reference site photographs, flood-mapping imagery and heritage overlays. When duplicate or mismatched images appear in those files, applicants and objectors cannot reliably assess what is actually being proposed at a given address.

What the Audit Found Along Mann Street and Beyond

Council's digital services team flagged the problem after multiple applicants working on sites along Mann Street and within the Gosford waterfront precinct — stretching toward Kibble Park — reported that image thumbnails in lodged DA documents were resolving to photographs from entirely different properties. In several cases, a flood-impact image uploaded for a site near the Narara Creek corridor appeared attached to a residential application in Woy Woy. The council has not publicly confirmed how many files are affected, but internal correspondence cited in council meeting agendas from the June 30, 2026 ordinary meeting references a review of documents submitted between January 2024 and June 2026.

The problem is not unique to the Central Coast. NSW Planning Portal, which is administered by the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, has seen intermittent metadata and file-management issues since a system migration that began in late 2023. However, the volume of applications flowing through Gosford — driven by rezoning activity and developer interest in the fast-rail corridor narrative — appears to have amplified the local impact. The Central Coast Local Planning Panel alone considered more than 60 applications in the 12 months to June 2026, according to council's published panel meeting schedule.

Why This Week's Fix Matters for Housing and Trust

The council's decision to run a dedicated image-replacement and re-verification process is significant given how recently the organisation emerged from state-appointed administration, which ended in May 2022. Rebuilding community confidence in council's administrative competence has been a stated priority of the elected council since its return. A technical failure visible to any member of the public who opens a DA on the portal cuts against that effort, particularly for residents in suburbs like Erina and Wamberal who have been closely watching flood-resilience planning documents.

The audit team is working through a checklist process, manually verifying image metadata against submitted file names and property addresses. Council's digital services unit is also liaising with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure to flag cases where the duplication originated at the state portal level rather than in council's own uploads. A corrected batch of files is expected to be re-published to the portal by July 18, 2026, though council has not made a formal public announcement setting that date in stone.

For residents and developers with active applications, the practical advice from council officers — communicated through the DA inquiry line at Gosford's Baker Street administrative offices — is to cross-check any image attachments against the written site description on the cover sheet of each document. If the photograph does not match the address listed, applicants are being asked to contact council's development enquiries team directly rather than waiting for the automated audit to catch the error. Community members tracking planning submissions through the Gosford City Centre Master Plan process, or through the Central Coast Community Environment Network, should flag any discrepancies they notice before the July 18 remediation deadline to ensure corrected images are included in the first round of fixes.