Perth Councils and Developers Race to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Swamping Planning Portals This Week

Planning offices across Perth's inner and middle-ring suburbs spent much of this week manually reviewing thousands of duplicated site photographs and architectural renders lodged through the state government's Development Assessment Panels online portal — a backlog that property industry figures say is compounding housing approval delays already stretching into months.

The problem is specific but consequential. When applicants upload supporting images to the DAPS system — or through individual council e-lodgement platforms — duplicate files are being accepted without automated rejection, creating bloated application packages that staff must sort by hand before assessment can begin. The City of Stirling and the City of Swan, two of Perth's highest-volume local governments for new residential applications, have both flagged internal workflow disruptions this week linked to the issue, according to property consultants working with those councils.

Why This Week's Flare-Up Matters

The timing is particularly poor. Western Australia's housing market has been under sustained pressure since at least early 2025, driven by a combination of AUKUS-related workforce immigration, Metronet corridor development attracting infill projects, and a state population that the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated grew faster than any other jurisdiction in the 12 months to September 2025. Rental vacancies in suburbs like Midland, Balga and Cannington have sat below one per cent for the better part of two years.

Against that backdrop, any administrative friction that extends the time between lodgement and approval has real-world consequences — delayed builds, longer waits for renters, and holding costs that developers typically pass on. A planning consultant working with multiple Stirling Highway apartment projects — who The Daily Perth agreed not to name because they are engaged in active negotiations with a local government — said the duplicate image issue has added between five and 15 business days to the pre-acceptance stage of several applications lodged since mid-June 2026.

WA's Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage manages the overarching DAP system. The department did not respond to questions from The Daily Perth before deadline on Saturday. The City of Stirling's planning directorate confirmed the issue existed but declined to provide specifics about how many applications had been affected.

What Is Being Done — and What Comes Next

Industry body the Urban Development Institute of Australia WA chapter circulated guidance to members this week recommending that applicants manually audit image folders before submission and use file-naming conventions that make duplicates easier to identify on the receiving end. The guidance, issued Thursday, specifically flagged that files exported from common architectural software packages — including Revit and ArchiCAD — often auto-generate duplicate renders when exported in batch.

At least two councils, including the Town of Victoria Park, are understood to be trialling automated duplicate-detection scripts at the intake stage, though neither has confirmed a rollout date. The City of Swan told The Daily Perth it was monitoring the situation and reviewing its e-lodgement checklist requirements.

The state government's broader Metronet Precincts program, which covers transit-oriented development sites along the new Ellenbrook and Morley-Ellenbrook lines, relies on the same DAP infrastructure for medium and high-density applications. Any systemic slowdown in that pipeline carries political weight for the Cook Labor government, which has pointed to Metronet precincts as a centrepiece of its housing supply response.

For applicants with active lodgements, the practical advice this week is straightforward: contact the relevant council's planning intake team directly, confirm whether your application package is in the pre-acceptance queue, and ask whether a duplicate image audit is required before the clock on statutory timeframes begins. Applications stuck in pre-acceptance do not trigger the 90-business-day determination period under the Planning and Development Act 2005 — meaning the delay is invisible in official statistics but very real for the people waiting on it.