Central Coast Council Moves to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Plaguing Planning Portal

Central Coast Council confirmed this week it is actively working to resolve a duplicate image fault in its public-facing planning and development application portal — a problem that has caused confusion for property owners, builders and real estate agents trying to track DA progress across the region since at least March 2026.

The fault, which results in the same site photograph or document scan appearing multiple times against a single DA listing, has slowed assessment workflows at the council's Gosford administration hub on Mann Street and drawn complaints from applicants lodging projects in growth suburbs including Warnervale, Hamlyn Terrace and Tuggerah. Council officers this week flagged the issue internally as a data migration carry-over from the 2023 upgrade of the state-linked NSW Planning Portal, according to council meeting notes published on the council's website.

Why This Week's Fix Matters for DA Applicants

The timing is pointed. Central Coast Council only emerged from state-imposed financial administration in October 2022 after a well-documented governance crisis, and restoring public confidence in its digital services has been a stated priority under its current operational improvement program. A functioning, accurate planning portal is not an administrative nicety — for a region where the median house price in Gosford sits around $820,000 and development activity underpins much of the local economy, delays or confusion in the DA system translate directly into holding costs for builders and prospective buyers.

The council's 2025–26 Operational Plan, publicly available on its website, lists digital service modernisation as one of four key delivery pillars. The duplicate image issue cuts against that commitment. Council officers told a working session this week that a full audit of affected DA records lodged between January and June 2026 is now underway, with a target remediation date of 31 July 2026 set for the highest-priority listings.

The practical effect on applicants has been real. Builders working on residential projects along the Pacific Highway corridor at Tuggerah have reported needing to re-upload documents that the system had already accepted, only to find multiple versions sitting against their application file. Surveyors operating out of Erina Fair's professional services precinct flagged the duplication problem to the council's development services team in April, according to council correspondence logs. No financial compensation mechanism for affected applicants has been announced.

What the Council Says It Will Do Next

The remediation plan has two stages. First, a manual audit by council's records and information management team will identify every DA file where duplicate images are confirmed. Second, council's IT contractor will apply a deduplication script to the backend database, a process the council estimates will take approximately three weeks once the audit is complete. The council has also committed to notifying affected applicants directly via the contact details held in each DA file.

Anyone who lodged a development application through the NSW Planning Portal between 1 January and 30 June 2026 and who is waiting on an assessment outcome is advised to log into their portal account and check whether their submitted documents are correctly displayed. The council's Development Services team can be reached directly via the contact page on council's website or in person at the Gosford Customer Service Centre on Mann Street. Applicants in the northern part of the region can also visit the Wyong Customer Service Centre on Hely Street.

The broader lesson sits in the context of a hot political and administrative moment for the state. With Premier Chris Minns acknowledging publicly this week that Labor faces a difficult path to re-election, NSW councils are under heightened scrutiny to deliver functional basic services. For Central Coast, where trust in local government is still being rebuilt after administration, getting the planning portal right before the spring development season picks up is not a small thing.