A balancing act in public ownership: the quiet legacy of the Bank of England Act 1946

Andrew Hewitt

Sunday 1 March 2026 was the 80th anniversary of the Bank’s coming into public ownership, following the Bank of England Act 1946. It was the first of eight major nationalisations by the post-war Labour government and the only one not to be later reversed, in whole or in part. Some opponents, at the time, were said to consider it a revolutionary ‘measure of first-class importance’; others considered it inconsequential. Although it was a defining point in UK financial history, it did not feature highly in the public consciousness. Yet it laid enduring foundations for the Bank’s operational and financial independence, carefully balancing powers to act in the public interest with limits on political interference.

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Is UK monetary policy driving private housing rents?

Daniel Albuquerque and Jamie Lenney

Rent prices have risen by 9% on average in England since the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) started raising interest rates in December 2021. Alongside this rise in prices has been a widening in the gap between reported supply and demand in the rental sector, with tenant demand continuing to rise in 2023 amidst falling supply (RICS survey). Is monetary policy causing the rise in rents? In this post, we provide evidence that temporary increases in interest rates are ultimately associated with a decrease in rental prices that follows an initial, but relatively short lived, increase in rental prices and tenant demand. These results also hold across regions in England.

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Monetary policy spillovers in the first age of financial globalisation: ripple or a riptide?

Georgina Green

In the first age of financial globalisation, from around 1880 to 1913, many countries tied their currencies to the mast of gold. The Bank of England’s unparalleled influence over this period is depicted by the Lady of the Bank, seated on the globe with a shower of gold coins to one side, which is carved into the Bank’s pediment. There was an old saying in the City that the Bank’s rate could draw gold from the moon. But could it?

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Looking inside the ledgers: the Bank of England as a Lender of Last Resort

Michael Anson, David Bholat, Miao Kang and Ryland Thomas

Imagine if you could peek inside the Bank’s historical ledgers and see the array of interest rates the Bank has charged for emergency loans in the past. If you could get the inside scoop on how many of these loans were never repaid, and how that impacted the Bank’s bottom line? Now you can. We have transcribed the Bank’s daily transactional ledgers and put them into an Excel workbook for you to explore. These ledgers contain a wealth of information on everyone who asked the Bank for a loan during the 1847, 1857 and 1866 crises.

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