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The base rate has not moved since December 2025. Inflation has.

What money costs in the UK right now, and whether lending is moving. Five figures published by the Bank of England and the Office for National Statistics, read here every morning. They set the ground your quote sits on, not the quote itself. Nothing here is a forecast and nothing here is advice.

Last read 30 September 2026, 07:00

Base rate

3.75%4.00 to 3.75−0.25Dec 2025The rate everything else is built from.Set by the Bank of England eight times a year, who call it Bank Rate. Unchanged since 18 December 2025, cut from 4.0%.
Source
Bank of England
Series
IUDBEDR
Effective
18 December 2025

CPI inflation

3.1%2.9 to 3.1+0.2on July 2026How much prices have risen over twelve months.The target is 2%, so this is 1.1 points above where it is meant to be. It is the reason the rate is being held rather than cut.
Source
Office for National Statistics
Series
D7G7
To
August 2026
Next due
21 October 2026

Net lending to businesses

2.7bn1.9 to 2.7+0.8on July 2026Whether UK businesses borrowed more than they repaid.More borrowed than repaid for the 30th month running. When this goes negative, firms are paying debt down rather than taking it on, and lenders notice before you do.
Source
Bank of England, Money and Credit
Series
LPMVWNQ
For
August 2026

SONIA

3.73%3.7305 to 3.7300−0.0005on 24 Sep 2026What it costs one bank to borrow from another, overnight.Not in the news, and not the same thing as the base rate. But it is closer to what lending actually costs, and it moves between meetings. If a quote changed and the headlines said rates had not, this is usually why.
Source
Bank of England
Series
IUDSOIA
For
25 September 2026

Mortgage approvals

54,918a month55,928 to 54,918−1,010on July 2026How many house purchases were approved for funding last month.Residential rather than investment property, so it reads as the temperature of the property market rather than bridging demand.
Source
Bank of England
Series
LPMVTVX
For
August 2026

None of this sets your rate directly. It reaches a quote through whoever is funding the loan: a bank lending from deposits, a specialist lender borrowing from the markets to lend on, or a private lender weighing it against what the money would earn sitting still. Which applies depends on the case, and none of them moves in step with the figures above.

Every figure here is read from the publisher, not retyped. The Bank of England and the ONS give each of these a series identifier: IUDSOIA for SONIA, D7G7 for inflation. Those identifiers are printed beside each figure so anyone can take one to the publisher's own database and check our number against theirs. Nothing is adjusted, interpreted or forecast. Where a source has not published since our last read, the figure says when the next one is due rather than being hidden. Bank of England and Office for National Statistics data under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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