Benchmark UK interest rates are now predicted by economists to fall by a further half-point to 4% by the year-end, with a slim majority of forecasters expecting this cut will be delivered in one big move when the Monetary Policy Committee concludes its next meeting on November 6.

This median expectation that base rates will finish 2008 at 4%, in a poll of more than 50 economists published yesterday by news agency Reuters, contrasts with a year-end forecast of 4.5% in a similar survey taken only last week.

The latest poll was taken after the Bank of England committee joined other major central banks around the world in delivering a half-point cut in benchmark interest rates at noon on Wednesday in a concerted effort to ward off global economic crisis.

Forecasts of near-term UK interest rates have been cut dramatically since last month, as the global credit crisis has taken a lurch for the worse in the wake of the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers and a raft of economic data has reinforced fears that the UK economy is headed for recession.

The median forecasts in the latest Reuters poll have UK base rates at 3.5% by the end of the first quarter of next year and at 3.25% by next June, with another quarter-point reduction to 3% forecast in the fourth quarter of 2009. The prediction in last week's poll was that base rates would bottom out at 4% by the middle of next year.

The latest poll was published after HBOS subsidiary Halifax said yesterday morning that the average UK house price had fallen by a further, seasonally-adjusted 1.3% in September.

This left the average price last month about 13.3% adrift of that in September last year, the worst year-on-year decline since comparable records began in 1983.

On Halifax's preferred measure of the annual move, comparing the latest three months to September with the same period last year, the average UK house price was down 12.4%. This is also the worst year-on-year fall since comparable records began a quarter of a century ago.

Seema Shah, property economist at consultancy Capital Economics, said: "September's fall marks the eighth consecutive monthly decline.

"This is yet another negative trend that has surpassed the early 1990s slump, when the longest run of house price falls was seven months "The UK economy is still on course for a two-year contraction, buyer confidence is muted, house prices remain overvalued, and lenders are likely to remain cautious. In addition, it is doubtful that interest rates on offer to new borrowers will fall as far as official interest rates.

"The bottom line remains the same: house price falls still have much further to go."

The latest bleak house price survey, and its implications for the wider economy, weighed on the pound yesterday.

Sterling was last night trading around $1.7068, down more than two-and-a-quarter cents from its $1.73 close against the US currency in London on Wednesday.

The pound also fell against the euro. The single currency was last night trading around 79.7p - up about 0.65p on its Wednesday close in London.