The UK’s interest rate has today (Thursday, August 3rd) been raised a further 0.25% by the Bank of England (BOE), to a new level of 5.25%.

It is the 14th hike in a row and the last time the base rate was this high was over 15 years ago, back in April 2008.

The reason behind the BoE’s rate rise decision is that, in their opinion, inflation remains far too high.

While high interest rates can benefit savers, millions of UK households face higher mortgage payments.

And higher mortgage rates appear to be starting to weigh on the UK housing market, as prices are currently falling by the most since 2009.

The 0.25% raise in the base rate is lower than the shock 0.5% hike announced by the BOE in June, and comes after the latest inflation statistics, provided by the Office for National Statistics, suggests price rises might finally be starting to slow.

Indeed, some economists now believe that the current cycle of mortgage interest rate hikes may be slowly coming to an end, although not before the possibility of the base rate hitting 5.75% this year.

And the pressure to make ends meet is still proving extremely high for a lot of UK households.