The Bank of England said today it was keeping its benchmark interest rate at 0.1% and it left unchanged the size of its bond-buying programme at £745 billion.

The Bank of England's nine monetary policy-makers voted 9-0 to keep rates on hold and 9-0 in favour of making no change to its bond-buying programme.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected the Bank of England to hold steady at its September policy meeting. 

Many of them say the UK central bank is likely to increase the size of its bond-buying programme in November.