The Bank of England is facing criticism from small business owners, who see plenty of support being offered to individuals to help them cope with rising interest rates and the cost of living crisis but little being done to support their businesses that are suffering from significantly higher operating costs.

Having watched the Central Bank hike interest rates consistently since the end of 2021, Small and Medium Enterprises have had to deal with not just the effects on their markets of Brexit, but a cost of living crisis that hits them equally hard as individual households.

They made representations to Downing Street to ask the Prime Minister to intervene on their behalf when the Budget is delivered next month to provide some well needed support.

The January inflation report was published yesterday, and it showed despite the stabilization of energy costs, headline inflation only fell marginally from 10.5% to 10.1% while core inflation fell from 6.3% to 5.8%. The price of staple food stuffs like low fat milk, eggs and pasta rose significantly, while the cost of olive oil alone rose by 40% compared with a year ago.

Despite headline inflation only falling by 0.4% year-on-year, the financial markets believe that it was sufficient to cause the Bank of England to slow or even bring a halt to the current cycle of interest rate rises.

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