{"id":538261,"date":"2026-07-22T08:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538261\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T08:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:25:11","slug":"uk-inflation-rate-falls-to-2-6-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538261\/","title":{"rendered":"UK inflation rate falls to 2.6% – live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘I don’t switch the oven on’ because of money worriespublished at 08:33 BST<\/p>\n

08:33 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Eleanor Lawrie
Social affairs reporter<\/p>\n

\"Elaine<\/p>\n

The inflation rate falling does not mean prices are dropping<\/a>, it just means they are rising less quickly.<\/p>\n

Elaine Yates, 77, says money worries mean she “can’t remember” the last time she used her oven to cook a hot meal.<\/p>\n

“I don’t look after myself. I can’t remember the last time I put the oven on. I have got an air fryer that I probably used about three weeks ago,” she says. <\/p>\n

The Northamptonshire pensioner spent 20 years as a full-time carer for her husband. Her finances are now “extremely tight”, so she has felt particularly vulnerable to price rises since he passed away.<\/p>\n

Four years into the cost of living crisis, almost two-thirds of low-income families say they struggle to buy essentials such as clothes, heating and food, according to anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.<\/p>\n

A record 62% of low-income families were unable to afford an essential item in the past six months, the charity found – the equivalent of 7.4m households, up from 7.1m a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘I don’t switch the oven on’ because of money worriespublished at 08:33 BST 08:33 BST Eleanor LawrieSocial affairs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-538261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}