Sterling edged further away from last week's eight-month low against the euro on Tuesday while it held steady on the dollar with investors focusing on a survey on Britain's services industry due later in the day. The CIPS/ services purchasing managers index, due at 0830 GMT, is expected to fall slightly to 56.50 in September from 56.90 in August. The survey will give a further insight to the state of the domestic economy after a series of recent weak data raised expectations that UK interest rates might be close to their peak. "In the near term the risk for sterling is still biased towards the downside but with interest rate expectations pared back already we need to get a significantly below consensus number today to move sterling lower," said Riz Din, FX strategist at Barclays. By 0715 GMT sterling was up around a quarter of a percent on the day at 68.70 pence per euro , having hit an eight-month low of 69.16 last week. Against the dollar it inched up to $1.7870 from $1.7843 in late New York on Monday. The Bank of England meets later this week but is expected to leave rates steady at 4.75 percent.|||