Local authorities should be given more power to leverage funding from businesses to pay for the infrastructure needed to win over communities to new development. The suggestion, contained in the Whitehall sub-national review of economic development and regeneration, insists that communities should be offered greater fiscal incentives to accept housing growth. Allowing local councils to reform business tax rates “so that localities benefit directly from increased income,”is one “promising mechanism”recommended in the review, along with the much-maligned planning gain supplement (PGS) proposals, which the prime minister has recently put on ice. <br><br>“There is scope significantly to improve the incentives for localities to grow by ensuring that communities see and reap the benefits of growth,”said the report by the English Regions Network, which represents England’s eight regional assemblies outside London. It is thought that the government would limit the extra levy to four pence in the pound. The report follows Gordon Brown’s decision to halt the progress of PGS legislation, giving the industry time to put forward alternatives to the tax, which would be levied on the windfall increase in land value resulting from a planning consent. <br><br>The PGS would be “unworkable”in practice, claim industry bodies including the Home Builders Federation …