- Capital works, 2026-27$348.9m
- Contingency line$22.0m
- Share of the program6.3%
- Projects deferred to fund it12
- Those projects, added up$21,963,300
The reason matters because it is unusual. A local council in New South Wales has written an overseas conflict into its capital budget as a named risk, and paid for the hedge out of local projects rather than by borrowing or raising the program.
What the plan says, in its own words
The contingency exists To manage potential cost increases and supply chain impacts linked
to the Middle East conflict
. It is roughly $22 million inside the 2026-27 capital works
program, and the plan is explicit that the money did not come from anywhere new:
This has been funded by temporarily deferring a small number of projects into a
“Projects & Programs Pending” category, rather than increasing the overall
capital budget
.
How the twelve were chosen is also set out. Projects were reviewed using a structured,
risk-based approach
, with Priority was given to maintaining funding for projects that are
critical for safety, compliance, service delivery, and externally funded commitments
. The
ones that moved are those that can be rephased with the least impact to the community and
Council operations
.
Once set aside, the money is not tied to any particular project. It
will operate as a single pool of funding that can be used if projects experience cost
increases due to the Middle East crisis during the year
.
The twelve, and what happens to them
Twelve projects have been placed in the pending category
, and their fate is
conditional in a way worth reading carefully. If the contingency is not fully required,
these projects may be brought back into the 2026-27 program where timing and resources
allow
. But If the contingency is fully utilised, these projects will be deferred to
2027-28, with flow-on adjustments to future years of the infrastructure pipeline
. Either
way, Early planning work on these projects will continue so projects are ready to proceed if
funding becomes available
.
| Project | Suburb | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Sewage Treatment Plant, major augmentation works | Charmhaven | $8,000,000 |
| Intersection upgrade, Ocean Beach and Rawson Rd | Woy Woy | $2,400,000 |
| Regional Animal Care Facility construction | Region Wide | $2,000,000 |
| Drainage upgrade, Avoca Drive | Avoca Beach | $1,909,000 |
| Wyong Administration Building B, level 3 and 4 internal fitout renewal | Wyong | $1,650,000 |
| Little Wobby Wharf replacement | Little Wobby | $1,550,000 |
| Boardwalk renewal, Marine Parade | Long Jetty | $1,250,000 |
| Wyong Administration Building C, workspace renewal | Wyong | $1,000,000 |
| Wyong Administration Building D, workspace renewal | Wyong | $1,000,000 |
| Transport and Access Management Program, Gosford City Centre | Gosford | $851,300 |
| Road upgrade, Mann Street | Gosford | $200,000 |
| Road upgrade, Kendall Street and Holden Street | Gosford | $153,000 |
| Total | $21,963,300 |
The arithmetic that shows where the money went
This is our own calculation rather than a statement the plan makes, and it is the part that tells you the pending list really is the source of the contingency.
The plan breaks the $22 million contingency down by where the money comes from: $8.0 million from restricted funds and $14.0 million from general fund general revenue. Restricted funds are money that can only be spent for the purpose it was collected for, which for a council includes water and sewer charges.
Now look at the twelve. The single largest is the Charmhaven sewage treatment plant augmentation at exactly $8,000,000, a sewer project, and sewer money is restricted. The remaining eleven add up to $13,963,300, which is $14.0 million to the nearest hundred thousand. The contingency’s two funding lines match the pending list almost to the dollar, split the same way.
That correspondence answers the question the tables raise on their own. The pending amounts are not whole project budgets: the Charmhaven plant still carries $40.2 million in the capital table for 2026-27, and the Woy Woy intersection still carries $8.7 million. The pending figure is the slice of each project’s year that has been pulled into the contingency pool.
What this does and does not mean for a project near you
It does not mean these twelve are cancelled, and it does not mean work stops. The plan says planning continues and that they may return to this year’s program if the money is not needed. What it does mean is that a portion of each one’s funding this year is now contingent on construction costs elsewhere in the program, and the outcome will be visible before the projects are.
Where it becomes visible is named in the plan too: changes to the program-level budget
will be reported to Council through the Quarterly Budget Review and Adjustment process
.
That is the document to watch, and we will.
Update, 28 August: the business paper confirms the mechanism, and puts a number on the other risk
This story said the contingency was funded from inside the program by holding projects rather than by adding money, and one step of that was our own reading rather than the council’s statement. We have now read the business paper for the 29 June 2026 ordinary meeting, the paper carrying the report that recommended adoption. It states the mechanism in the council’s own words.
Report 6.2 to that meeting says: To manage potential cost increases and supply chain
impacts linked to the Middle East conflict, $22m worth of projects have been identified to be
held as contingency to manage the impact of these risks.
Earlier in the same paper it is put
more plainly still: the risk is being managed by holding $22m worth of projects as
contingency.
The paper gives the total capital program as $348.9 million,
the same figure this story used.
So the reading holds. The contingency is projects held, not cash set aside.
The risk the council chose not to provision for
The paper also carries something this story did not have. The conflict is treated as two separate risks with two different answers. The capital risk is provisioned, by holding the $22 million of projects. The operating risk is not.
Councillors considered the question at a workshop on 23 May 2026, and the report records both the size of that risk and what was decided about it:
Regarding the risks associated with Middle East Conflict on the operating result, (estimated to be in the order of $13m) it was agreed that considering Council’s healthy level of unrestricted cash, it was appropriate to monitor the risk and the associated impacts on financial settings and delivery of the Operational Plan and if required any adjustments to be considered through the Operational Plan and Budget Reviews during 2026-27.
For scale, the same report gives the 2026-27 budgeted operating result excluding water and sewer as a surplus of $0.4 million, down from the $0.6 million put on exhibition, and a budgeted consolidated operating deficit of $2.8 million.
Our view, labelled as such. Of the two positions, the unprovisioned one is
the more exposed. A risk the council itself sizes at around $13 million sits against a surplus
of $0.4 million, and the answer to it is monitoring rather than money. That is a defensible
call, and the council states its reason: unrestricted cash is healthy. It is also a call the
paper is candid about the consequences of, saying the surplus allows very little scope to
absorb adverse financial impacts that may arise
and that quarterly reviews during 2026-27
are more likely to require significant budget reallocations and service changes than what has
occurred historically.
Those are the council’s words about its own year, not ours. The
$22 million of held projects is the visible response to this conflict; the larger number is the
one with nothing held against it.
One thing the business paper does not do is restate the contingency’s split by funding source, so the arithmetic in the section above is still ours and stays labelled that way.
How we did this
Read from the adopted Delivery Program 2025-29 and Operational Plan 2026-27, the 152 page PDF published by Central Coast Council, downloaded and read on 24 August 2026. Every quoted passage above is verbatim from that document. The twelve project names, suburbs and amounts come from the plan’s own table headed Pending Projects and Programs (PP*), whose stated subtotal of $21,963,300 the twelve line items sum to exactly, which we checked.
The funding-source comparison in the section above is our arithmetic, not the council’s claim. The plan states the contingency split of $8.0 million restricted and $14.0 million general revenue in its works program by expenditure type table, and separately lists the twelve pending amounts; setting the two side by side is our own step, and we have labelled it as such. We have not asked the council to confirm that reading, and there may be an accounting reason for the match that we cannot see from the document.
The update above is read from the agenda of the ordinary meeting of 29 June 2026, a 132 page PDF we downloaded and read on 28 August 2026. It confirms the mechanism this story described and supplies the $13 million operating-risk estimate and the 23 May workshop decision, neither of which appears in the adopted plan itself. It does not restate the funding-source split, so our arithmetic above remains our own.
Our earlier story on the adopted budget, published 3 July, described this line as holding $22 million back to manage cost fluctuations, which is what the council’s media release said. Nothing in that story was wrong; the adopted instrument is simply more specific than the release, which is why we went and read it. Figures are subject to rounding, as the plan notes.