Wollongong Council Moves to Purge Duplicate Property Images From Public Planning Portal

Wollongong City Council confirmed this week it is undertaking a formal audit of its public-facing development application portal after an internal review identified a significant volume of duplicate and mismatched property images clogging the system. The clean-up, which began in the final week of June 2026, targets records linked to applications lodged between January 2023 and March 2026.

The timing matters. NSW planning regulations introduced under the Minns government's housing acceleration package require councils to publish DA documentation within five business days of lodgement. Duplicate image files — often uploaded multiple times by applicants using the ePlanning portal — inflate file sizes, slow automated processing and, in some cases, attach photographs from one property to the public record of a neighbouring address. For a city where the development pipeline along the Crown Street corridor and the Northbeach precinct is moving faster than at any point in a decade, administrative accuracy carries real consequences.

What the Audit Found and Who Is Affected

Council's information management team identified the problem after a routine check of applications lodged through the NSW Planning Portal, the state-run system that feeds data into Wollongong's own Development Hub. Duplicate images were most concentrated in multi-dwelling applications in Fairy Meadow and Corrimal, two suburbs where medium-density infill proposals have surged since 2024. Files attached to applications in those suburbs averaged 47 per cent more storage demand than comparable applications in other parts of the local government area, according to the council's internal data governance report tabled at the June 30 ordinary meeting.

The University of Wollongong's Smart Infrastructure Facility, which has an existing data-sharing arrangement with council covering smart-city projects near Innovation Campus on Squires Way, flagged the image duplication issue as a systemic risk during a joint working group session in May. The facility's involvement does not extend to rectifying the records directly — that remains a council function — but the collaboration helped quantify the scale of the problem before the formal audit was commissioned.

Property owners who lodged DAs for residential alterations in Keiraville and Mount Kembla between July and December 2024 have been separately notified by letter that their application files may contain images from adjacent lots. Council advises that no assessments were made on the basis of misattributed images, and that all final determinations in that cohort have been reviewed and confirmed as valid.

Practical Steps for Applicants

Council is asking anyone who has an active, undetermined DA — or who lodged one in the three-year window under review — to log into the NSW Planning Portal and verify that site photographs attached to their application show the correct address. The portal's document management section allows applicants to flag discrepancies using a reporting function added to the system in February 2025.

BlueScope Steel's Environment and Community team, which regularly submits environmental monitoring reports and minor works applications through the same portal for its Port Kembla steelworks operation, confirmed it is cooperating with the audit but declined to specify the number of files under review. Port Kembla's industrial precinct accounts for some of the largest individual document submissions in the council's DA database by file size.

The audit is expected to conclude by August 15, 2026. Council's planning directorate has engaged a third-party data management contractor to assist with the de-duplication, with the contract valued at under $80,000 and awarded through a panel arrangement established under council's existing ICT procurement schedule.

Once completed, the cleaner dataset will be migrated to an upgraded version of the council's Geographical Information System, which is being rolled out progressively across the Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation's member councils over the second half of this year. Residents can track the audit's progress through the council website's planning news section or attend the next ordinary council meeting, scheduled for July 28 at the council administration building on Burelli Street.