LONDON—British consumer prices rose at the fastest annual pace in nearly 30 years last month, intensifying the squeeze on households and reinforcing the chances that the Bank of England will raise interest rates for a third meeting in a row.
The annual rate of consumer price inflation rose to 5.5 percent in January, the highest since March 1992, when Britain was emerging from a long period of inflation-feeding high wage deals. This was above most economists’ forecasts in a Reuters poll for it to hold at December’s 5.4 percent rate.
