Introduction
TIF has been the great hope of the regeneration industry for
almost as long as people can remember. Under Labour, expressions of
interest were invited, only for progress to stall after 84 local
authorities had submitted 124 bids. Birmingham, Leeds, London (for
the Northern Line Extension) and Sheffield submitted the largest
pilot proposals. The total funding sought ran to £2.33bn,
with the highest bid being for £400m and the lowest for
£750000.
Once the Coalition came into power, the prospects for TIF at
first looked bleak until Nick Clegg's announcement of 20
September 2010 at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference,
"[And] I can announce today that we will be giving local
authorities the freedom to borrow against those extra business
rates to help pay for additional new developments."