INFLATION IN the UK as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent in the year to July 2022, five times the target set by the government for the Bank of England (BoE). The CPIH, which measures inflation including costs associated with owning your own home, was seven higher at 13.6 per cent.
Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said the increase was largely due to rising fuel and food prices. “The cost of both raw materials and goods leaving factories continues to rise, driven higher by higher metal and food prices respectively.”
The Bank has forecast that inflation will go higher still, to 13 per cent per cent before the end of this year, and that the UK will fall into recession. Rising costs tend to disproportionately affect retired people, whose incomes rarely keep up with inflation; for example, the basic State pension rose by just 3.1 per cent in April.
With the cost of everything from energy to phone contracts, food, fuel, public transport, clothing and borrowing
