Central Coast Council Tackles Duplicate Image Problem Across Digital Asset Library This Week

Central Coast Council confirmed this week it is mid-way through a structured audit of its digital asset management system, targeting thousands of duplicate, mislabelled and orphaned images that have cluttered its public-facing planning and property records portal since the organisation emerged from state administration in 2021. The clean-up, which began in earnest in late June 2026, is affecting how development applications are displayed on the council's website and how heritage and flood-overlay maps are rendered for properties across the region.

The timing matters. Council is simultaneously processing a record volume of development applications linked to the Gosford CBD renewal corridor — including proposals along Mann Street and around the Gosford train station precinct — and staff have flagged that duplicate site photographs attached to DA files were causing confusion for applicants checking the status of their submissions online. In at least some cases, images from one property address were appearing against a different lot, a problem that became more acute as the portal's traffic grew with the post-administration surge in residential development inquiries.

What the Audit Covers and Why It Took This Long

The council's digital records go back to the merger of Gosford City Council and Wyong Shire Council in May 2016. That amalgamation brought together two separate document management systems, and the subsequent administration period — which ran from April 2020 to May 2021 under state-appointed administrators — meant routine database maintenance was deprioritised. By the time elected councillors returned in December 2021, the digital library held an estimated backlog that IT and records staff described internally as a significant remediation task, according to publicly available council business papers from that period.

The current audit is being run through council's Gosford administration centre on Mann Street and involves cross-referencing images against the NSW Planning Portal's property identifiers. Staff are using lot and deposited plan numbers to reconcile each image to its correct address. Wyong Road-area rural residential files and properties in the Tuggerah Lakes precinct around The Entrance have been identified in council agenda documents as among the datasets requiring the most correction work, given the volume of subdivision activity in those areas over the past decade.

For residents and small developers, the practical disruption has been modest but real. Some applicants lodging DAs for secondary dwellings — a category that has grown sharply on the Central Coast as Sydney commuters seek rental income to offset mortgage costs averaging above $850,000 for a detached house in suburbs like Woy Woy and Terrigal — found the wrong site photos attached to their files when they logged into the NSW Planning Portal to check progress. Council's customer service line at Gosford and the Wyong office on Hely Street reported a higher-than-usual call volume on this issue during the week of June 23.

What Happens Next for DA Applicants

Council's records and information team expects the bulk of the duplicate image replacement work to be completed by the end of July 2026. Files tied to active development applications are being prioritised over historical archived records, which means most applicants with live DAs should see corrected images attached to their portal entries within the next three weeks.

Anyone who lodged a DA in the past 12 months and is uncertain whether the correct site photographs are on file is being encouraged to log into the NSW Planning Portal and check the documents tab on their application number. If an image clearly does not match the property — a common issue identified this week involved rural Kulnura addresses being paired with Erina Fair-area commercial site photos — council's development assessment team can be contacted directly to flag the error for priority correction.

The episode underscores a broader challenge facing councils that went through forced amalgamations or administration: the unglamorous but consequential work of merging legacy data systems rarely attracts headlines, but it shapes whether the basic machinery of local planning actually works. With Gosford's CBD renewal expected to generate a sustained pipeline of major DAs through 2027 and beyond, getting the digital foundation right is not optional.