UK interest rates cut to 0.25%

The Bank of England has taken radical action to prevent the UK from falling into recession, cutting interest rates to 0.25% – the lowest level in the institution’s 322-year history – and pumping billions of pounds of newly created money into the economy.

The Bank also announced the biggest cut to its growth forecasts since it started making them in 1993. It has reduced its growth prediction for 2017 from the 2.3% it was expecting in May to 0.8%.

The Bank said that alongside the rate cut it would reignite its quantitative easing scheme, buying a further £60bn of government debt and taking the total size of the scheme to £435bn.

It would also buy up to £10bn of corporate bonds.

In an effort to ensure the rate cuts would be passed on to customers without banks facing their own funding costs, the Bank also said it would create a £100bn system it called the Term Funding Scheme to provide cheap funding to banks.

The combined package may result in an extra £170bn of money being printed, making it one of the biggest single policy packages ever unveiled by the central bank.