Verb after ing form as a gerund

I am confused about this sentence.

"Having updated and accurate maps of land use aid regional planners to plan for the future."

The verb "to aid" in this sentence has to take an "s"?

"Having updated and accurate maps of land use aids regional planners to plan for the future."

Solution 1:

As it stands the sentence has two parts which may lead the reader astray on a first reading. Firstly, having updated... may be interpreted as a verb phrase with updated as its past participle.

Instead, having is the ing form of the verb to have, here meaning to be in the possession of. And updated is an attributive adjective describing maps.

The second point at which the reader may go astray is in the string land use aid. Here aid may be interpreted as the head of a noun phrase, i.e. aid in using land. Whereas aid is in fact a verb here.

So, the intended interpretation of the sentence is:

Subject: Having updated and accurate maps of land use

Predicate: aids regional planners to plan for the future.

Since the grammatical number of the subject is singular, the verb needs to agree and be singular too. In this case, the third person form of the present simple.

It is not uncommon that writers apply faulty verb concord or agreement to a plural word in a complex subject phrase.

If you are the writer of this sentence you might want to rephrase it to avoid the possible momentary misinterpretations which lead readers up a garden path.