Wollongong's Duplicate Image Problem: What Happens Next and the Key Decisions Ahead

A growing number of development applications lodged with Wollongong City Council have hit delays traced to duplicate or outdated imagery embedded in digital planning records — and the window to fix the problem before a fresh wave of Port Kembla rezoning decisions arrive is narrowing fast.

The issue is not new, but it has sharpened in urgency this winter. The NSW Department of Planning and Environment's ePlanning portal, which councils including Wollongong use to process submissions, relies on georeferenced aerial and cadastral imagery to verify site conditions. Where duplicate image files have been uploaded — sometimes from separate surveying firms working the same parcel — the system flags conflicts that freeze automated checks and push files to manual review queues. The backlog compounds every week that goes unresolved.

Why does it matter now? Port Kembla is in the middle of one of the most consequential land-use reviews in Wollongong's recent history. The NSW Government's Renewable Energy Zone planning framework and BlueScope Steel's green transition have both triggered interest from industrial and infrastructure proponents looking to lodge development applications along Reeves Street and within the Outer Harbour precinct. Any systemic drag on the approvals process hits those proponents directly.

Where the Tangles Are Worst

The Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation, which coordinates regional planning between Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama and Shoalhaven councils, flagged the duplicate-imagery issue as a procedural concern in its 2025–26 work program. Staff across member councils have been asked to audit their ePlanning submissions for redundant attachments before lodgement, but the guidance is advisory rather than mandatory, and uptake has been uneven.

Crown Street Mall and the Keira Street commercial corridor have both seen small-to-medium development applications sit in limbo for longer than the 40-business-day statutory determination target that applies to most local development under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. Property professionals working in the Wollongong CBD say the imagery conflicts are one of several contributing factors, alongside resource constraints inside council's assessment team.

The University of Wollongong campus precinct at Northfields Avenue is separately affected. Several student accommodation proposals submitted in late 2025 involve parcels where consecutive aerial surveys — one commissioned by the university, one by a private developer — produced overlapping georeferenced files. Those files, when both uploaded to a single application, trigger the conflict flag.

The Decisions That Will Define the Resolution

Three choices now sit in front of decision-makers, and the sequence matters.

First, Wollongong City Council must decide whether to issue formal lodgement guidelines that prohibit duplicate imagery at the point of submission — a step that would require an update to its DA lodgement checklist, a document last revised in March 2024. That change is within council's administrative authority and does not require a full council vote.

Second, the Department of Planning and Environment needs to decide whether the ePlanning portal itself should carry automated deduplication logic — essentially, software that identifies and rejects identical or near-identical image files before they are attached to a live application. The department ran a portal upgrade in February 2026 that addressed some file-format conflicts, but image deduplication was not included in that release.

Third, and most consequentially for the Illawarra Shoalhaven region's pipeline, the joint organisation's next quarterly meeting — scheduled for August 2026 — will consider whether to recommend a regional standard for geospatial data formatting across all four member councils. A unified standard would reduce the frequency of conflicts arising from cross-boundary projects, which are becoming more common as the Port Kembla energy precinct attracts proponents whose sites straddle council boundaries.

For anyone with an application in the queue right now, the practical advice from planning practitioners is to check every image attachment before submission, confirm that no two files carry identical coordinate metadata, and contact Wollongong City Council's Development and Building department on Crown Street directly if an application has exceeded the 40-day determination window. The council's pre-lodgement meeting service, which costs $330 for a standard session, can identify file conflicts before they reach the formal queue — and at this point in the planning cycle, that two-hour meeting may be the most efficient use of a developer's time.