How Wollongong's councils and developers ended up with thousands of duplicate property images — and what's being done to fix it

Wollongong City Council is working through a backlog of duplicated property and planning images embedded across its digital development application portal, a problem that trace back to at least three separate data migrations carried out between 2014 and 2023. The issue affects records tied to addresses across the LGA — from subdivision files in Dapto and Shellharbour Road corridor rezoning documents to heritage assessments lodged for properties in the Keira Street precinct.

The timing matters. The Illawarra is processing a heavier development pipeline than at any point in recent memory. BlueScope Steel's green transition at Port Kembla has generated dozens of environmental and planning submissions. The Illawarra Shoalhaven Regional Development Fund has directed capital toward projects requiring updated spatial records. And state government pressure to unlock housing supply — including medium-density proposals around Fairy Meadow and Corrimal — means councils cannot afford a compromised document base when community members and developers are pulling records daily.

How the duplication problem took root

The core issue is not new, but it compounded with each system upgrade. Wollongong City Council moved its development application records to an online public portal incrementally, beginning with a partial migration around 2014 under what was then the e-Planning framework rolled out across NSW local government. A second migration followed when the NSW Planning Portal was expanded to absorb council-level records after 2018. A third round of data handling occurred during the 2022–23 financial year when council updated its internal content management system.

Each migration pulled image files from the previous repository. Without a deduplication protocol built into the transfer process, the same site photograph, elevation drawing, or site plan would appear two, three, or in some documented cases four times against a single DA reference number. For planning officers reviewing a DA, the practical effect was manageable — a trained officer knows which image is current. For members of the public using the portal on Crown Street or developers lodging objections from outside the region, the archive looked inconsistent and at times contradictory.

The University of Wollongong's Smart Infrastructure Facility, based on Northfields Avenue in Keiraville, has been involved in broader regional data integrity discussions, though the council's image-replacement program is an internal administrative process. The Illawarra's regional data governance has also come under scrutiny as part of the Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation's push to standardise spatial datasets across member councils, a project that formally began in mid-2024.

Where the cleanup effort stands now

Council has not publicly specified how many image records require replacement, but planning officers have described the remediation work as ongoing across multiple DA categories — residential, commercial, and industrial. Properties in the Port Kembla industrial precinct, where BlueScope and related proponents have lodged a high volume of environmental and construction documents since 2022, represent one concentration of affected records. The Berkeley and Warrawong residential corridors, both subject to medium-density rezoning proposals, are another.

The practical fix involves replacing placeholder or duplicated image files with correctly versioned documents, then tagging each with a metadata timestamp to prevent re-duplication in future migrations. It is unglamorous work. But given that the NSW Land and Environment Court routinely relies on council portal records when adjudicating development disputes, the accuracy of those image files carries legal weight that goes well beyond administrative housekeeping.

For anyone lodging a DA, objecting to a neighbour's proposal, or simply trying to understand what was approved for a site on Princes Highway or Flagstaff Road, the practical advice from planning practitioners is consistent: if an image on the portal looks out of sequence or carries an unexpected file date, request a certified copy of the document directly from council's customer service centre on Burelli Street. Council is required to provide it. The portal, until the cleanup is complete, should be treated as a guide rather than the definitive record.