Economists described the unchanged state of Britain's Consumer Price Index (CPI)

Economists described the unchanged state of Britain's Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures released Tuesday as "a little disappointing."

The CPI figures for September remained at 2.7 percent, failing to follow through the fall in August to 2.7 percent from June's 2.9 percent.

However, within the figures, weaker producer input and output prices could point to continuing pressures forcing inflation lower in the future.

Howard Archer, chief UK and EU economist with IHS Global Insight, said, "A little disappointing that consumer price inflation did not continue to edge lower in September, but it did at least hold steady."

Archer said it meant that inflation averaged 2.73 percent in the third quarter, which was marginally less than the 2.82 percent forecast by the Bank of England (BOE) in its August Quarterly Inflation Report.

Lower petrol prices helped limit inflation in September but this was countered by upward pressure from higher air fares. There was also a small increase in food prices.

With CPI remaining at 2.7 percent in September, the squeeze on consumers' purchasing power currently remains appreciable, said Archer, given that inflation is still running at more than double annual average earnings growth of 1.1 percent in the three months to July.

James Knightley, chief UK economist with ING, said, "Pipeline inflation pressures remain subdued. Annual input price inflation slowed to 1.1 percent from 2.4 percent while output price inflation slowed to 1.2 percent from 1.7 percent. With wages also remaining very subdued this suggests that the main components of consumer price inflation should continue to slow."

Knightley said the main risk was utility bills, which could rise sharply in coming months and keep inflation remaining well above the 2 percent central target.

He added, "With house prices continuing to rise -- the house price report showed property price inflation rising to 3.8 percent in August from 3.3 percent - and Wednesday's labor report set to show ongoing job gains, we continue to look for an early 2015 rate hike."

Simon Hayes, chief UK economist with Barclays Economics Research, said he now expected CPI to drift slowly towards 2 percent, making it increasingly unlikely that either of the price stability knock-outs adopted by the BOE Monetary Policy Committee under its forward guidance policy would be triggered.

He said, "Although we expect inflation to decline towards target only slowly, perhaps not reaching 2 percent until early 2015, the magnitude of the shock that would be required to trigger either of the price stability knock-outs is likely to get larger."

Looking towards next month's figures, Archer said that with producer prices benign in September and the impact of the October 2012 jump in university fees about to drop out of the figures, "there seems every chance that CPI could dip to 2.5 percent in October."

He said he expected inflation to then hover around 2.5 percent for a while before trending gradually lower to reach 2.2 percent at the end of 2014.