How Central Coast Council's Image Problem Became a Planning Headache: The Story Behind Duplicate Property Photos

Central Coast Council is working to purge hundreds of duplicate and mismatched property images from its development assessment database — a problem that traces directly to the chaotic merger of Gosford City Council and Wyong Shire Council in May 2016, when two entirely different record-keeping systems were bolted together under significant time pressure and with limited IT resourcing.

The duplication issue matters now because the Council is in the middle of its Gosford CBD revitalisation push, processing a surge of development applications along Mann Street and the Georgiana Terrace precinct, where accurate photographic records of existing structures underpin heritage impact assessments. Getting the wrong image attached to the wrong lot — even briefly — can delay a DA by weeks and, in some cases, trigger requests for fresh surveys that cost applicants additional money.

Two Councils, One Database, Ten Years of Drift

The 2016 merger created a unified entity responsible for roughly 340,000 residents across a local government area stretching from Patonga in the south to Mannering Park in the north. What it did not immediately create was a unified digital asset register. Staff at the former Gosford council offices on Mann Street and those at the Wyong Civic Centre on Hely Street were operating different property information platforms at the point of amalgamation, and the data migration that followed was, by subsequent council reviews, acknowledged as incomplete.

By the time the Council entered state administration in October 2020 — after a $565 million financial crisis forced the NSW Government to install administrators — the image duplication problem had compounded. Administrator Rik Hart, later joined by Deb Clifford, focused understandably on financial stabilisation and service continuity. Auditing photo libraries ranked well below balancing a budget that had blown out by tens of millions of dollars. The Council returned to elected representation in December 2021, but the legacy data problems remained largely unaddressed through 2022 and into 2023 as staff turnover continued to affect institutional knowledge.

The practical effect is visible in the Council's own GIS portal, where users researching properties in suburbs like Woy Woy, Terrigal, and Wyong town centre occasionally encounter thumbnail images that clearly depict a different building type, streetscape, or lot configuration than the address suggests. Council staff have confirmed in planning committee correspondence — documents publicly available through the Council's meeting archive — that the property image library requires systematic review, though a completion timeline has not been publicly set.

What the Backlog Means for Applicants

Central Coast has recorded consistent population growth pressure since 2020, driven partly by Sydney households seeking more affordable housing. Median house prices in suburbs like Kariong and Hamlyn Terrace remain substantially below comparable Sydney fringe markets, keeping demand for both new builds and renovation approvals steady. The Council's Development and Environment directorate processed more than 4,800 development applications in the 2023-24 financial year, according to figures published in the Council's annual report for that period.

Each of those applications relies on accurate site imagery at some stage of assessment. When a duplicate image is flagged — either by a planner, an applicant's architect, or a heritage consultant — the standard process requires the Council's property data team to verify the correct image, update the record, and reattach documentation before the DA can progress. That verification step is manual. There is no automated deduplication tool currently operating across the Council's Exponare or Authority software environments, based on information detailed in past Council ICT strategy presentations.

The Council's current ICT roadmap, as referenced in its 2025-26 operational plan, includes a broader property data remediation project intended to align records ahead of any future integration with the NSW Government's ePlanning portal upgrades. Applicants lodging DAs for sites in the Gosford City Centre boundary — the area earmarked for the CBD revitalisation effort centred around the Leagues Club Field redevelopment and the proposed aquatic and leisure centre — are advised by planning consultants to submit their own photographic evidence as a matter of course, rather than relying on Council imagery being current or correctly matched. That workaround costs applicants time and, typically, a surveyor's fee. It is a patch on a problem that has its roots in a merger decision made a decade ago.