Official numbers released today showed that inflation in the United Kingdom reached a 40-year high of 9% in April, as food and energy costs skyrocketed, worsening the country’s cost-of-living crisis.
This was disclosed by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics in a release tilted “Consumer price inflation, UK: April 2022”
The 9% rise in the consumer price index is the highest since records began in their current form in 1989, outstripping the 8.4% annual rise posted in March 1992 and well ahead of the 7% seen in March of this year.
The Bank of England has hiked interest rates at four consecutive meetings, raising the cost of borrowing from its historic pandemic-era low of 0.1% to a 13-year high of 1%, as it looks to rein in runaway inflation without stomping out economic growth.
What you should know
- The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 9.0% in the 12 months to April 2022, up from 7.0% in March.
- On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 2.5% in April 2022, compared with a rise of 0.6% in April 2021.
- The Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) rose by 7.8% in the 12 months to April 2022, up from 6.2% in March.
- The largest upward contributions to the annual CPIH inflation rate in April 2022 came from housing and household services (2.76 percentage points, principally from electricity, gas and other fuels, and owner occupiers’ housing costs) and transport (1.47 percentage points, principally from motor fuels and second-hand cars).
- From April 1, the U.K. energy regulator increased the household energy price cap by 54% following a surge in wholesale energy prices, including a record rise in global gas prices. The regulator, Ofgem, has not ruled out further increases to the cap at its periodic reviews this year.
