Two numbers land in the next month that decide what your money costs. Only one of them matters to you

There are two dates in the next month that every business news outlet will treat as important. On Wednesday 19 August the Office for National Statistics publishes July's inflation figure. On 17 September the Bank of England announces whether it is moving interest rates.

Between them sits a month of headlines about what central banks might do. The Guardian reported this weekend that the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England all appear unclear on how to handle inflation that is rising while growth slows — with rising UK energy bills doing much of the lifting on the inflation side.

All of which is genuinely interesting, and almost none of which you can act on. So here is the version that is actually useful to a business with eleven staff and an overdraft.

Where things actually stand

Bank Rate is 3.75%. The Monetary Policy Committee held it there at its meeting ending on 29 July 2026, but the vote was six to three, with the three dissenters wanting a quarter-point rise to 4%.

That split is the part worth reading. A unanimous hold means the Committee is comfortable. A six–three hold with the minority pushing upwards means a rise is a live argument inside the room, not a hypothetical outside it.

On prices, the most recent published figure is June, when the Consumer Prices Index rose 2.6% over twelve months and CPIH rose 2.8%. Wednesday's release covers July, and it is the last full reading the Committee sees before it meets in September.

Why the rate is the smaller number for most firms

Here is the thing nobody says on the business news, because it makes for a poor headline: for a typical small firm, a quarter-point move in Bank Rate is worth a few hundred pounds a year.

Take a business with a £75,000 term loan over five years. Move the rate from 6.75% to 7.25% — half a point, or twice the size of one MPC decision. The monthly payment goes from £1,476.26 to £1,493.95. That is £17.69 a month, and £1,061 across the entire five years.

It is not nothing. It is also not the thing keeping the business awake, and it is comfortably less than most owners lose to an unreviewed subscription list.

Where rates do bite harder is on anything with no fixed end date. Overdrafts, revolving credit facilities and invoice finance reprice immediately and keep repricing, so the exposure is continuous rather than locked. If most of your borrowing is short-term and rolling, a rate move reaches you within weeks. If it sits in a term loan at a fixed rate, it may not reach you for years.

The rate decision is the story everyone covers. The energy contract nobody has opened is usually worth ten times more, and it does not appear on the news at all.

The number that is genuinely large

Business energy has no price cap. Ofgem's cap covers domestic customers; commercial supply is sold on fixed-term contracts, and when one ends without a replacement in place you drop onto out-of-contract or deemed rates — typically the most expensive thing the supplier sells.

The arithmetic is brutal in a way the interest rate arithmetic is not. A small shop or workshop using 30,000 kWh a year moves £300 for every penny per kilowatt hour on its unit rate. A 3p difference is £900 a year. A 5p difference is £1,500 — more than the entire five-year cost of that half-point rate rise, every single year, on a contract most owners have never renegotiated.

And unlike interest rates, this one is entirely within your control. You cannot vote at the MPC. You can absolutely ring three brokers.

What to do in the next four weeks

Three jobs, in this order.

**Find your energy contract end date.** Not roughly — the actual date, off the actual contract. If it falls within the next twelve months, start getting quotes now, because the worst outcome is not a bad fixed rate, it is rolling onto deemed rates because nobody diarised it. Put the date in the calendar with a six-month reminder attached.

**List every borrowing facility and mark it fixed or variable.** Term loan, overdraft, asset finance, invoice finance, credit cards, the director's loan nobody has documented. Then run your cashflow forecast at half a point higher and see what happens. Twenty minutes of work, and the number is usually smaller than the worry.

**Check when you last changed your prices.** If it was more than eighteen months ago, that is the lever with real leverage, and it is the only one of the three that does not depend on anything happening in Threadneedle Street. A 3% price increase on £400,000 of turnover is £12,000 straight to the bottom line, which dwarfs both of the numbers above.

The honest conclusion

If Wednesday's inflation figure comes in hot, expect a week of headlines suggesting a September rise is now likely. If it comes in soft, expect a week suggesting the opposite. Both weeks will feel significant and neither will change what you should do.

The six–three vote in July is the most useful thing on the record, because it tells you the Committee itself is divided. When the people with the data cannot agree, a small business owner trying to time a decision around their forecast is playing a game with no edge.

So do not time it. Fix what you can control, know what a half-point move costs you so it stops being frightening, and spend the attention you were going to give the September announcement on the energy contract in the drawer instead.

Common questions

What is the Bank of England base rate right now?

Bank Rate is 3.75%. The Monetary Policy Committee maintained it at that level at its meeting ending on 29 July 2026, voting by a majority of six to three — the three dissenters wanted an increase of 0.25 percentage points, to 4%. That split is the part worth noticing. A unanimous hold says the Committee is comfortable; a six–three hold with the minority pushing upwards says a rise is genuinely on the table rather than theoretical. The next decision comes from the meeting ending on 16 September 2026 and is announced the following day.

When is the July inflation figure published?

On Wednesday 19 August 2026, from the Office for National Statistics. The most recent published figure is for June 2026, when the Consumer Prices Index rose by 2.6% over twelve months, with CPIH at 2.8%. The July release will show whether the rising energy costs currently in the news have started to feed through into the headline number. It is the last full inflation reading the Monetary Policy Committee sees before it meets in September, which is why a figure that would otherwise be a footnote gets treated as a signal.

How much would a 0.25 point rate rise actually cost my business?

Less than most owners assume, if you have a term loan. On a £75,000 five-year loan, moving from 6.75% to 7.25% — twice the size of a single MPC move — changes the monthly payment from £1,476 to £1,494, about £18 a month and roughly £1,060 across the whole term. Where it bites harder is on facilities with no fixed end: overdrafts, revolving credit and invoice finance all reprice immediately and keep repricing. If your borrowing is short-term and rolling, a rate move reaches you far faster than if it sits in a term loan.

Is there a price cap on business energy?

No. Ofgem's energy price cap applies to domestic customers only. Business supply is sold on fixed-term commercial contracts, and when one ends without a replacement you are moved onto out-of-contract or deemed rates, which are typically the most expensive tariff a supplier offers. Nobody writes to tell you that your unit rate has doubled in a way you cannot miss. This is why a business energy contract is the single most neglected large cost in a small firm, and why the renewal date deserves a diary entry rather than a pile on the desk.

What should I actually do in the next four weeks?

Three things, in order. Find your energy contract end date and start getting quotes if it falls inside the next twelve months. Write down every borrowing facility you have, whether each is fixed or variable, and what a half-point move would cost you — the arithmetic takes twenty minutes and usually produces a smaller number than the anxiety did. Then look at when you last changed your prices. If the answer is more than eighteen months, that is the lever with the most leverage, and it does not depend on anything the Bank of England does.

Should I fix my borrowing now or wait?

That depends on whether you can absorb the swing, not on whether you can predict the decision. Fixing buys certainty and usually costs a little more; staying variable is cheaper while rates hold and exposes you if they move. The honest test is a cashflow forecast run at half a point higher: if the business still works, the certainty is optional; if it does not, you are not really choosing between fixed and variable, you are choosing between fixing and hoping. Nobody at the Bank of England knows what September holds either, which is what a six–three vote actually tells you.