Prices in the UK rose even faster than expected last month, reaching the highest level in 18 months, according to official figures.

Inflation hit 3.8% in July, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed.

Not since January 2024 have prices risen as fast.

It’s up from 3.6% in June and is anticipated to reach 4% by the end of the year.

Economists polled by Reuters had only been expecting a 3.6% rise.

More unwelcome news is contained elsewhere in the ONS’s data.

Train tickets

Another metric of inflation used by government to set rail fare rises, the retail price index, came in at 4.8%.

It means train tickets could go up 5.8% next year, depending on how the government calculate the increase.

This year, the rise was one percentage point above the retail price index measure of inflation.

These regulated fares account for about half of rail journeys.

Why?

Inflation rose so much due to higher transport costs, mostly from air fares due to the school holidays, as well as from fuel and food.

Petrol and diesel were more expensive in July this year compared to last, which made journeys pricier.

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Coffee, orange juice, meat and chocolate were among the items with the highest price rises, the ONS said. It contributed to food inflation of 4.9%.

What does it mean for interest rates?

Another measure of inflation that’s closely watched by rate setters at the Bank of England rose above expectations.

Core inflation – which measures price rises without volatile food and energy costs – rose to 3.8%. It had been forecast to remain at 3.7%.

It’s not good news for interest rates and for anyone looking to refix their mortgage, as the Bank’s target for inflation is 2%.

Whether or not there’ll be another cut this year is hotly debated, but at present, traders expect no more this year, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

Economists at Capital Economics anticipate a cut in November, while the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) expect one more by the end of the year.

Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics forecast no change in the base interest rate.

Political response

Responding to the news, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said:

“We have taken the decisions needed to stabilise the public finances, and we’re a long way from the double-digit inflation we saw under the previous government, but there’s more to do to ease the cost of living.”

Shadow chancellor and Conservative Mel Stride said, “Labour’s choices to tax jobs and ramp up borrowing are pushing up costs and stoking inflation. And the Chancellor is gearing up to do it all over again in the autumn.”

An AI start-up which claims to act as an ‘immune system’ for software has landed $17m (£12.6m) in initial funding from backers including the ventures arm of Alphabet-owned Google.

Sky News has learnt that Phoebe, which uses AI agents to continuously monitor and respond to live system data in order to identify and fix software glitches, will announce this week one of the largest seed funding rounds for a UK-based company this year.

The funding is led by GV – formerly Google Ventures – and Cherry Ventures, and will be announced to coincide with the public launch of Phoebe’s platform.

It is expected to be announced publicly on Thursday.

Phoebe was founded by Matt Henderson and James Summerfield, the former chief executive and chief information officer of Stripe Europe, last year.

The duo sold their first start-up, Rangespan, to Google a decade earlier.

Their latest venture is motivated by data suggesting that the world’s roughly 40 million software developers spend up to 30% of their time reacting to bugs and errors.

Financial losses to companies from software outages are said to have reached $400bn globally last year, according to the company.

Phoebe’s swarms of AI agents sift through siloed data to identify errors in real time, which it says reduces the time it takes to resolve them by up to 90%.

“High-severity incidents can make or break big customer relationships, and numerous smaller problems drain engineering productivity,” Mr Henderson said.

“Software monitoring tools exist, but they aren’t very intelligent and require people to spend a lot of time working out what is wrong and what to do about it.”

The backing from blue-chip investors such as GV and Cherry Ventures underlines the level of interest in AI-powered software remediation businesses.

Roni Hiranand, an executive at GV, said: “AI has transformed how code is written, but software reliability has not kept pace.

“Phoebe is building a missing layer of contextual intelligence that can help both human and AI engineers avoid software failures.

“We love the boldness of the team’s vision for a software immune system that pre-emptively fixes problems.”

Phoebe has signed up customers including Trainline, the rail booking app.

Jay Davies, head of engineering for reliability and operations at Trainline, said Phoebe had “already had a real impact on how we investigate and remediate incidents”.

“Work that used to take us hours to piece together can now take minutes and that matters when you’re running critical services at our scale.”

Energy bills are now expected to rise in autumn, a reversal from the previously anticipated price drop, a prominent forecaster has said.

Households will be charged £17 more for a typical annual bill from October as the energy price cap is due to rise, according to consultants Cornwall Insight.

In roughly six weeks, an average dual fuel bill will be £1,737 a year, Cornwall Insights predicted, 1% above the current price cap of £1,720 a year.

The price cap limits the cost per unit of energy and is revised every three months by the energy regulator Ofgem.

Bills had previously been forecast by the consultants to fall in October. Such an increase had not been anticipated until now.

Why are bills getting more expensive?

Charges are predicted to be introduced from October to fund government policies. Measures such as the expansion of the warm home discount, announced in June, will add roughly £15 to an average monthly bill.

The discount will provide £150 in support to 2.7 million extra people this year, bringing the total number of beneficiaries to 6 million.

Volatile electricity and gas prices are also to blame for the forecast increase.

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Turbulent geopolitical events during Ofgem’s observation period for determining the cap, including the unpredictability of US trade policy, have also had an impact, while Israel’s airstrikes on Iran intensified concerns about disruption to gas shipments.

Prices have eased, however, with British wholesale gas costs dropping to the lowest level in more than a year.

Also helping to keep the possible bill rise relatively small is news from the European Parliament that rules on gas storage stocks for the winter would be eased.

Bulk buying and storage of gas in warmer months helps eliminate pressure on supplies when demand is at its highest during cold snaps.

When will bills go down?

A small drop in bills is forecast for January, but it is subject to geopolitical movements, weather patterns and changes to policy costs.

An extra charge, for example, could be added to support new nuclear generating capacity.

The official Ofgem announcement will be made on 27 August.