Perth Councils and Developers Rush to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Plaguing Planning Portals This Week

Planning departments across greater Perth spent much of this week untangling a surge in duplicate image uploads that has clogged the state's online development application portals, forcing manual reviews of hundreds of residential and commercial submissions. The problem, which accelerated after the WA Planning Commission's document management system received a software patch in late June 2026, has pushed processing times out by at least five to seven business days for affected applications, according to information circulating among planning consultants in the industry.

The timing is particularly painful. Perth's housing pipeline is already under pressure from record immigration-driven demand, with residential land in outer corridors like Alkimos and Eglinton moving faster than approvals can keep pace. Any blowout in processing time feeds directly into project delays, holding costs, and — ultimately — the price of a finished home.

Where the Backlog Is Biting

The City of Stirling and the City of Swan have emerged as the two local government areas with the highest volume of flagged duplicate submissions this week, based on information circulating through the Western Australian planning consultant community. Both councils cover high-growth residential zones: Stirling takes in suburbs such as Balga, Karrinyup and Stirling itself, while Swan's corridor through Midland, Ellenbrook and the Upper Swan valley has been a focal point of Metronet-linked infill and greenfield development since the rail expansion program began moving into its later stages.

The issue stems from how applicants upload supporting images — site photographs, shadow diagrams, and streetscape renders — through the state's ePlanning portal. When a submission is partially lodged and then re-submitted after a correction, the system in some cases retains both image sets under the same reference number. Planners then cannot proceed without manually verifying which file set is current, a step that ordinarily takes minutes but becomes a bottleneck when it applies to dozens of files simultaneously.

Perth-based planning firm consultants working in the Stirling and Joondalup corridors told colleagues at an industry forum held at the UDIA WA offices on Hay Street on Thursday that some clients received automated rejection notices for applications that were, in fact, complete — triggering a second round of uploads and compounding the original duplication problem.

Practical Steps Applicants Are Taking Now

The WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage has not issued a formal public advisory as of Saturday morning. However, planning agents have been informally advising clients to take several precautions immediately. Before lodging any application this week, applicants are being told to clear cached browser data, use a single sequential upload session rather than saving drafts across multiple days, and confirm file naming conventions match the portal's July 2026 updated schema — which now requires a date prefix in YYYYMMDD format for all image attachments.

The City of Fremantle, which processes a significant volume of heritage-sensitive development applications in the West End and along South Terrace, circulated internal guidance to its counter staff on Wednesday directing officers to place a processing hold on any application where image count in the portal exceeds the declared number on the cover sheet by more than two files.

For ordinary homeowners seeking approvals — whether for a secondary dwelling under WA's R-codes, a pool enclosure, or a granny flat in suburbs like Dianella or Morley — the advice is straightforward: call your local council's planning counter before lodging, confirm your file list matches exactly what the portal accepts, and keep a local copy of every document with timestamps. If an automated rejection arrives, do not re-lodge immediately; contact the council's duty planner to check whether the original submission is still visible in the backend system.

The software vendor responsible for the ePlanning patch has not been publicly identified by the department, and a permanent fix has not been given a confirmed deployment date. With the state government's Metronet-aligned rezoning work continuing to push new development applications through councils from Yanchep to Thornlie, resolution before the end of July would significantly ease pressure on an already stretched approvals pipeline.