Your expensive haircut is keeping mortgage rates high

Homeowners hoping for a cut in the Bank of England base rate look set to be disappointed — and may be surprised to learn that their blow-dry is part of the problem.

Bank rate has been at a 15-year high of 5.25 per cent since August last year, and it looks likely to stick for a while longer.

It is high because the Bank of England has been trying to tackle inflation, which hit a 40-year high of 11.1 per cent in October 2022. Bank rate was raised 14 times from its record low of 0.1 per cent in December 2021 as economists tried to limit our spending, but the hope was that it would start to fall this summer.

Inflation figures out this week,