Suffolk restaurant owner calls for government support amidst struggles with inflation
He says food is double the price it was a few months ago
Businesses in Suffolk are continuing to struggle with impact of inflation.
Yesterday The Bank of England raised the base rate of interest to three percent in a bid to tackle the issue.
Darren Givin owns a restaurant in Ipswich and told us the future still remains unclear: "You either can't get supplies of food or it's double the price it was three months ago.
"The problem is, if you put those prices to your customers, you won't have customers in...
"I don't know what the future holds. Certainly, at the moment, our business is down, and I don't expect it to rise anytime soon.
"We have raised prices a little bit on beer, on wine and on food.
"We are doing more specials though, to make sure we're using things up and keeping the price down, so when people come out on a lunchtime, they're not spending £100, they're spending half of that."
He said the government still need to do more: "What I'd like to see happen is some help somewhere along the line. I don't know whether that comes in with VAT but we need something to keep us going.
"I don't know what can actually happen to sustain businesses going forward."
What happened yesterday?
he Bank of England hiked interest rates for the eighth time in a row.
The Bank's base rate will rise to 3% from 2.25%, its highest for 14 years, and decision makers warned that more hikes are likely.
It will pile around £3,000 per year on to mortgage bills for those households that are set to renew their mortgages, the Bank said.
The Bank also warned that the UK could be on course for the longest recession since reliable records began in the 1920s.
Gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink for every quarter for two years, with growth only coming back in the middle of 2024.
The economy has faced similarly long recessions in the past, but then the quarterly drops have been broken up with an occasional positive quarter.
However, the Bank cautioned that this forecast is based on interest rates reaching as high as 5.2%, which the Bank said it does not necessarily expect to happen.
It could be a drawn-out recession but will be less than half as severe as the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank said.
Bank governor Andrew Bailey warned "the road ahead will be a tough one".
He acknowledged that eight rate rises since last December are "big changes and they have a real impact on people's lives".
But he said: "If we do not act forcefully now, it would be worse later on."
However, he added: "We think Bank rate will have to go up by less than is currently priced in by financial markets."
This means that "the rates on new fixed-term mortgages should not need to rise as they have done", according to the central bank boss.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the Government would focus on tackling the UK's battered public finances to help limit the need for further big rate rises but admitted there are "no easy options".
He said: "The most important thing the British Government can do right now is to restore stability, sort out our public finances, and get debt falling so that interest rate rises are kept as low as possible.
"However, there are no easy options and we will need to take difficult decisions on tax and spending to get there."