Gosford Homeowners Hit by Duplicate Image Glitch Demand Answers From Council's Online Property Portal

Central Coast homeowners have been lodging formal complaints with Central Coast Council since at least late June after a technical fault began duplicating property images across multiple listings on the council's Development Application (DA) tracking portal — causing some residents to find photographs of a stranger's backyard attached to their own application file.

The glitch matters now for reasons that go well beyond inconvenience. The council only recently emerged from a bruising period of financial administration, and public trust in its digital infrastructure remains fragile. With Gosford CBD renewal projects generating dozens of concurrent DA lodgements along Mann Street and Point Frederick, and housing approvals under intense scrutiny from Sydney commuters priced into the region, any sign of administrative disorder amplifies existing anxieties about whether the council can handle a workload that has grown sharply since 2022.

Who Is Affected and Where

Residents in Gosford, Woy Woy and East Gosford have each reported encountering the duplicate image problem, according to concerns aired on the Central Coast Community Facebook group — a public forum with more than 40,000 members — over the past fortnight. One post from a Woy Woy Peninsula property owner described logging into the portal to check progress on a shed approval, only to find four photographs of an entirely different residential block attached to the file. Another commenter, identifying themselves as living near Kibble Park in central Gosford, said the images on their development submission had been replaced by photos of what appeared to be a duplex on a different street altogether.

The Gosford DA Hub, the council's publicly accessible planning register at council.centralcoast.nsw.gov.au, is the tool most affected residents rely on to track submissions from lodgement through to determination. For applicants paying the standard lodgement fee — which for a residential alteration under $100,000 in value typically runs between $285 and $595 under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021 — having incorrect documentation attached to a file is not a trivial frustration. It can delay assessment if an assessing officer flags the inconsistency and requests re-submission.

The Coastal Community Connect advocacy group, which has been pushing for improved council digital services since the administration era ended in 2023, flagged the issue in a written communication to council in the last week of June. The group has asked the council to confirm whether any DA determinations have already been made on files carrying erroneous images, and whether those determinations remain valid under the Act. The council had not issued a public statement on the matter as of the morning of 4 July 2026.

What Residents Are Asking For

The practical demands from affected community members are straightforward. They want the council to audit every DA lodged since 1 June — the period during which the fault appears to have first emerged — and notify any applicant whose file contains a non-matching image. They also want a clear timeline for the fix, and an assurance that assessment clocks will be paused for affected applications so no one is penalised for a delay caused by the council's own system.

Housing affordability pressure gives the story added weight. Median house prices on the Central Coast hovered around $920,000 in the June quarter, according to data published by the NSW Valuer General's office, meaning many applicants are managing six-figure assets through a system that is currently unreliable. Delays in approvals for granny flats — a popular strategy for mortgage-stressed households in suburbs like Umina Beach and Kariong — are particularly costly, since rental income from those structures can run to $400 or more per week.

Residents with pending applications are advised to download a complete copy of their lodgement file from the portal immediately, check every attached image against their own property address, and email the council's development services team directly at devservices@centralcoast.nsw.gov.au with a description of any discrepancy. Keeping a timestamped record of what the file shows now will be essential if an applicant later needs to demonstrate that delays or errors were not of their making.