Liverpool Council Launches Fresh Push to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Blighting Planning Portal

Liverpool City Council confirmed this week that it is accelerating a clean-up of its public planning portal after a growing number of duplicate and mismatched images were found attached to active applications across multiple wards — slowing decisions on projects from Baltic Triangle commercial conversions to residential extensions in Wavertree and Kensington.

The problem is not cosmetic. Under the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) Order 2015, planning officers are required to assess submitted documents as they appear on the public register. When the wrong elevation photograph, a repeated site plan, or a misassigned heritage image is attached to an application, it can trigger statutory re-consultation periods that add weeks, sometimes months, to a decision timeline. With Liverpool's planning committee already managing a contested caseload that includes sites around the Lime Street corridor and the northern docklands, delays compound quickly.

What Happened This Week

On Wednesday, July 2, the council's Development Management directorate circulated an internal note — obtained via a Freedom of Information request submitted by this newspaper — confirming that a dedicated image audit had been assigned to two members of the digital support team based at the Municipal Buildings on Dale Street. The audit covers all live applications submitted since January 2025, a pool understood to run to several hundred active cases. Officers have been asked to flag any file where a photographic attachment appears more than once under different document labels, or where an image clearly belongs to a different property address.

The issue came to a head at the June planning committee meeting, held at Liverpool Town Hall on Water Street, when objectors to a conversion scheme near Smithdown Road pointed out that site photographs uploaded under one reference number appeared to be recycled from a separate application in Anfield. The committee deferred the item pending clarification. That deferral drew attention from local architecture and planning practices who use the portal daily.

Liverpool's planning portal runs on the Idox Uniform system, the same back-end software used by dozens of English local authorities. Idox itself has acknowledged in published guidance that bulk document uploads — a time-saving measure increasingly used by applicants submitting multiple related applications — carry a higher risk of cross-contamination between case files if naming conventions are not followed precisely.

Why It Matters for Residents and Developers

For homeowners seeking straightforward householder permissions — a rear extension in Woolton, a loft conversion off Ullet Road — a duplicate image flag can feel disproportionately disruptive. The statutory eight-week target for householder decisions is already under pressure. According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's 2024-25 planning performance data, Liverpool determined 71 per cent of householder applications within the eight-week window, below the national standard of 80 per cent that triggers formal performance notices.

Local planning agents have been raising the image duplication issue informally for several months. The Merseyside branch of the Royal Town Planning Institute held a roundtable at its Exchange Flags offices in May at which portal data quality was listed as one of five recurring frustrations among practitioners. No formal resolution emerged from that meeting, which makes this week's council audit the first concrete operational response.

The council has not set a public deadline for completing the audit, but the internal note references the next planning committee cycle — scheduled for late July — as the target point by which the most sensitive live cases should be resolved. Officers are also understood to be preparing revised submission guidance for applicants and agents, expected to be published on the Liverpool City Council website before the end of July, that will include explicit file-naming protocols for photographic evidence.

Anyone with a live planning application who suspects their file may contain a duplicate or incorrect image is advised to contact the Development Management team directly at the Municipal Buildings, Dale Street, and request a document audit on their specific case reference number rather than waiting for officers to work through the queue. The council's planning portal can be searched by address or application number at liverpool.gov.uk/planning.