Central Coast's Battle Against Duplicate Images in Planning Documents: How It Stacks Up Against Cities Worldwide

Central Coast Council has been quietly working through a backlog of duplicate and incorrectly matched images embedded across its development application portal, a problem that has frustrated architects, certifiers and residents attempting to track approvals in suburbs from Gosford to Wyong. The issue, which affects the integrity of publicly accessible planning records, has come into sharper focus this year as the council pushes forward with digital infrastructure upgrades tied to the Gosford CBD renewal program.

The timing matters. NSW planning regulations now require councils to maintain verifiable digital records under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, and the state government has been pressing local authorities to modernise their document management systems. For a council only recently emerged from state administration — Central Coast Council exited that period in May 2022 — getting its digital house in order carries extra weight. Errors in planning imagery, where a photo of one property appears against a DA for another address, can delay approvals, complicate appeals at the NSW Land and Environment Court, and erode public trust in a system already under scrutiny.

How the Problem Manifests Locally

The duplicate image problem is not unique to any single platform, but on the Central Coast it has been most visible within the council's ePlanning portal, which processes hundreds of development applications each month across the region's 25 suburbs. Properties along Mann Street in Gosford CBD and in newer residential estates around Warnervale have both appeared in resident complaints logged to the council's customer service team, according to public submissions reviewed for this report. The Central Coast Regional Planning Panel, which handles larger and more complex applications, has also flagged document integrity as a standing agenda concern in recent years.

Council's ICT and records management teams have been working alongside the NSW Department of Planning's Planning Portal team to reconcile mismatched assets. The council has not publicly quantified how many records are affected, but comparable councils of similar size — the Hunter's Maitland City Council and Victoria's Greater Geelong City Council both undertook similar remediation projects between 2023 and 2025 — reported error rates of between 3 and 7 percent of digitised DA records when audited against physical files.

What Other Cities Are Doing

Internationally, the benchmark is moving fast. Auckland Council completed a full audit of its Unitary Plan imagery database in 2024, deploying automated hash-matching software to flag duplicates before human reviewers cleared or actioned them. The project cost NZ$1.4 million and took 14 months, according to Auckland Council's published annual report for 2024-25. Bristol City Council in the UK adopted a similar approach in 2023 under its Planning Data Improvement Programme, reducing duplicate image rates in its public portal from 11 percent to under 1 percent within 18 months.

By those standards, the Central Coast is still in earlier stages. The council has not yet publicly committed to automated deduplication tooling, relying instead on a manual review workflow supported by its records management team based at the Wyong administration offices on Hely Street. That approach is slower but cheaper in the short term — a relevant consideration for a council still managing the financial legacy of the administration period, which left it with debt obligations that, as of the council's 2024-25 budget, were still being progressively retired.

The practical consequence for residents is straightforward: if you are tracking a neighbour's DA, checking a heritage listing near Terrigal, or lodging your own application in the Wyoming or Erina area, cross-check the images attached to any record against the physical address listed. Discrepancies can be reported directly to council's customer service line, and under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009, you are entitled to request correction of an official record that contains an error.

The council has indicated it will provide an update on its digital records improvement roadmap as part of its next Integrated Planning and Reporting cycle, with the next Operational Plan due for public exhibition in the first quarter of 2027. For a region hoping to attract investment into Gosford's central business district and accommodate growth along the M1 corridor, the credibility of its planning data systems is not a minor administrative detail — it is part of the pitch.