Perth councils and agencies race to fix duplicate image problem hitting planning portals this week

Planning officers at multiple Perth local governments spent much of this week manually pulling duplicate images from development application portals after a systemic fault caused submitted site photographs and architectural renders to replicate incorrectly across unrelated files. The problem surfaced on Monday, 30 June, and by Friday had affected portals used by at least three metropolitan councils, according to public notices posted on their websites.

The timing is particularly awkward. Western Australia's housing approvals pipeline is under sustained pressure from population growth driven by AUKUS-related defence workforce expansion at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham and a continuing surge in skilled migration. Delays to the development assessment process — even short ones — can ripple out for weeks when assessment queues are already long.

What went wrong, and where

The City of Stirling, whose planning team processes one of the highest volumes of residential development applications in the metropolitan area, posted a notice on its website on Tuesday confirming that its online lodgement system had returned incorrect image attachments to some applicants reviewing their own submissions. Officers there asked applicants to refrain from resubmitting documents until a fix was confirmed, to avoid compounding the duplication problem.

The City of Swan, which covers rapidly developing corridors including Ellenbrook and Brabham, flagged a similar issue affecting its ePlan portal on Wednesday. Officers there confirmed via a website notice that some heritage photographic records attached to properties in Midland's historic precinct near the Old Midland Junction railway site had appeared duplicated or swapped between files. That category of error carries particular risk because incorrect heritage imagery can affect whether a property triggers a referral to the State Heritage Office under the Heritage Act 2018.

The Town of Victoria Park also acknowledged a lesser version of the problem, confined to a batch of subdivision applications lodged between 24 and 27 June.

Why duplicate images matter for approvals

Development applications in Western Australia require accurate photographic evidence of existing site conditions, streetscapes, and in some cases neighbouring properties, as part of the assessment record under State Planning Policy 7.3. When images are duplicated or appear against the wrong file, assessors face a choice: proceed with incomplete confidence in the record, or pause the file and request fresh documentation. Pausing is the safer legal position, but adds time.

Housing Industry Association figures published earlier this year put the median time from DA lodgement to first decision in the Perth metropolitan region at around 77 days for standard residential applications. Any systemic slowdown adds to a backlog that builders and developers say is already contributing to project cost blowouts, at a moment when construction material prices remain elevated following post-pandemic supply disruptions.

The duplicate image fault appears linked to a scheduled system update pushed to council-facing components of the state's shared Objective ECM document management platform late in June, though no government body had formally confirmed that as the root cause by the time this article was filed Friday afternoon. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, which administers state-level planning systems from its offices on Optima Centre Drive in Osborne Park, had not published a public statement on the matter as of 4 July.

For applicants who lodged material between 23 June and 1 July, the practical advice from council websites is consistent: log in and review your application file before the end of next week to confirm your images are correctly attached to your specific file number, and contact the relevant local government planning counter directly if anything looks mismatched. Do not resubmit documents without first speaking to an officer, because duplicate submissions can themselves create further administrative tangles. The City of Stirling's planning counter can be reached through its Civic Place offices on Dundebar Road in Wanneroo. The City of Swan's planning team operates from its administration building on Civic Drive in Midland.

Officers at all three affected councils indicated they expected the underlying fault to be resolved by the close of business on 7 July, after which affected files would be reviewed and any paused assessments restarted. Applicants with time-sensitive approvals — particularly those tied to construction finance drawdown schedules — are being encouraged not to wait and to contact their council directly on Monday morning.