Central Coast Council's Website Audit Uncovers Hundreds of Duplicate Images Across Key Planning Pages

Central Coast Council confirmed this week that an internal audit of its digital content management system identified more than 300 instances of duplicate or incorrectly filed images embedded across its planning, development application, and community engagement web pages. The review, understood to have been completed by the Council's communications and digital services team during the last week of June 2026, is now driving a staged replacement program expected to run through August.

The timing matters. Council is still rebuilding public trust after emerging from state-appointed administration in 2021, and its online transparency commitments are central to that effort. Residents in suburbs from Gosford to Wyong increasingly rely on the Council website to track development applications in their area — a process that becomes harder when property images, site photographs, and planning map thumbnails are misfiled or duplicated across multiple listings.

What the Audit Found

The problem is concentrated in two areas of the Council's digital system. Planning portal pages covering the Gosford CBD renewal precinct — particularly properties along Mann Street and within the Central Coast Quarter development footprint — were found to carry repeated use of the same stock or reference images attached to different DA listings. A separate cluster of duplicate image files was identified within the Wyong town centre pages, where flood-resilience planning documents published since 2024 share thumbnail images with unrelated infrastructure projects.

The Council's digital content system runs on a Content Management System that was partially migrated to a new platform in early 2025 as part of the post-administration technology uplift. Sources familiar with government CMS migrations — speaking in general terms, not about this Council specifically — say duplicate asset libraries are a common byproduct when legacy files are bulk-imported without a deduplication pass. The Council has not publicly attributed blame to the migration process, and The Daily Central Coast has not confirmed that link independently.

For residents using the DA tracker to monitor projects near homes in areas such as Kariong, Point Frederick, or the Woy Woy Peninsula, the practical effect is confusion: a site photograph of one streetscape appearing on a completely different property record creates doubt about whether they are looking at the right development.

Replacement Program and What Comes Next

Council's digital team has begun replacing duplicate images in order of page traffic, starting with the Gosford CBD planning precinct pages, which recorded the highest visitor numbers in the April–June 2026 quarter. The Mann Street corridor pages and the Central Coast Regional Planning Panel meeting archive are expected to be corrected first, with a target completion date of 18 July for that tranche.

The full replacement program — covering an estimated 340 affected image slots across roughly 90 separate web pages — is scheduled for completion by 29 August 2026. Council has not indicated whether the audit will extend to its interactive mapping tool, which sits on a separate system managed through the NSW Spatial Services platform.

For residents lodging or tracking DAs in the meantime, the Council's customer service centre at 2 Hely Street, Wyong, and the Gosford office at 49 Mann Street can provide printed copies of site photographs and correct property records on request. The DA reference number system itself has not been affected — only the visual assets attached to web-facing pages.

Council is also understood to be reviewing its image upload protocols to prevent recurrence, with new file-naming conventions for planning photographs expected to be introduced before the August deadline. Whether those changes will be folded into a broader post-administration digital governance review — one of the conditions set by the NSW Government when Council exited administration — has not been confirmed publicly.

Residents with concerns about specific DA listings can cross-check property details against the NSW Planning Portal at planningportal.nsw.gov.au, which maintains a separate and independently managed record of all Central Coast development applications.