Perth councils and agencies move to purge duplicate images from public records this week

Perth's City of Vincent confirmed this week it had flagged more than 340 duplicate images across its online development application portal, triggering a broader conversation about data integrity standards that several other local governments in the metro area are now being forced to address. The duplicates — largely aerial and cadastral photographs uploaded multiple times during a 2024 migration to a new document management system — have been sitting in public records largely undetected for over 18 months.

The issue matters now because WA's planning system is under unprecedented strain. The State Government's Metronet rail corridor expansion, combined with the housing demand surge driven by interstate and overseas migration, has pushed the volume of development applications through local councils to record levels. Duplicate images in submitted plans and heritage assessments create real compliance risks: approvals can reference the wrong version of a site photograph, creating legal exposure during appeals to the State Administrative Tribunal on Hay Street.

Where the problem surfaced — and who else is looking

The City of Vincent, which covers suburbs including Mount Hawthorn, North Perth and Leederville, identified the duplication issue during a routine audit of its Objective ECM platform in late June. The City of Stirling — Perth's largest local government by population — confirmed this week it is conducting a parallel review of its own digital asset registers, particularly records linked to the Scarborough foreshore redevelopment precinct and the Scarborough Beach Road planning corridor.

Landgate, the State Government's land information authority based in Midland, has also acknowledged that duplicate raster imagery tied to its statewide cadastral dataset required remediation in the first half of 2026. Landgate administers the foundation spatial data that feeds into council GIS systems, real estate platforms and AUKUS-related infrastructure planning around the Stirling Naval Base at Rockingham. Errors at that foundation layer can propagate across dozens of downstream systems simultaneously.

Property industry bodies have been watching the situation closely. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia noted at its May 2026 briefing in West Perth that incorrect or duplicated listing images had contributed to at least a handful of contested property descriptions referred to Consumer Protection WA in the preceding 12 months, though the agency has not publicly disclosed specific case numbers.

What the clean-up actually involves

Replacing a duplicate image in a government records system is not as simple as deleting a file. Under WA's State Records Act 2000, records must be formally sentenced before disposal, meaning councils need records management officers to assess whether a duplicate image constitutes a distinct record or a redundant copy. That distinction can be surprisingly hard to make when images carry different upload timestamps, different metadata strings, or have been referenced in correspondence chains.

Technology vendors are pitching AI-assisted deduplication tools to fill the gap. Perth-based digital records consultancy Imago Solutions, operating out of an office on Hay Street in the CBD, began demonstrations this week with at least two metropolitan councils on software that cross-references file hashes, geolocation metadata and upload histories to flag probable duplicates for human review — rather than automated deletion.

The practical timeline is tight. Several councils are aiming to have their registers clean before the October 2026 local government elections, when incoming councillors will be handed administrative responsibility for whatever backlog exists. A contaminated records base at that handover point is a governance headache nobody wants on day one.

Residents and applicants who have lodged development applications with any Perth metropolitan council in the past two years and are awaiting decisions should check their application status online. Where a planning officer contacts an applicant requesting resubmission of photographs or site plans, this is most likely a remediation request rather than an indication of problems with the application itself. The City of Vincent is directing queries to its planning services team at its Leederville offices on Oxford Street.