News

At its meeting ending on 9 September 2015, the MPC voted by a majority of 8-1 to maintain Bank Rate at 0.5%.
The MPC admitted that there remains a "range of views among MPC members about the balance of risks to inflation relative to the target".  At the Committee’s latest meeting, the majority of members judged that the current stance of monetary policy remained appropriate. However Ian McCafferty preferred to increase Bank Rate by 25 basis points, given his view that building domestic cost pressures would otherwise be likely to lead to inflation overshooting the target in the medium term.
The Committee voted unanimously to maintain the stock of purchased assets financed by the issuance of central bank reserves at £375 billion.
The MPC noted that while twelve-month CPI inflation rose slightly to 0.1% in July, it remains well below the 2% target rate. The MPC said that around three quarters of the gap between inflation and the target reflects unusually low contributions from energy, food, and other imported goods prices, with the remaining quarter reflecting the past weakness of domestic cost growth, and unit labour costs in particular. Although pay growth has recovered somewhat since the turn of the year, the recent increase in productivity means that the annual rate of growth in unit wage costs is currently around 1% – lower than would be consistent with meeting the inflation target in the medium term, were it to persist.
Barclays has today announced a number of changes to its buy to let mortgage range.
The bank has cut rates on ten of its buy to let products including its 2 and 5 year fixed rates, two year trackers, and 'Great Escape' fixed rates. It has also moved all buy to let product end dates to 31st December.
As well as the rate changes to the buy to let range, it has also make a number of cuts to its fixed rate residential products and launched a new 3-year fixed rate at 85% LTV, at a rate of 2.72% with a product fee of £999