The Bank of England is poised to keep its key repo rate unchanged at 4.75 pct when it concludes its rate-setting meeting today, though the vote on the nine-member panel could well be split. All 35 economists polled by AFX News expect the Monetary Policy Committee to keep its base rate unchanged. This will be the first meeting of Andrew Sentance, a former chief economist for British Airways PLC, and the first time since March that the Committee will be at full strength. "This is likely to be a very close call," said John Butler, economist at HSBC. Following comments earlier this week, the BoE's deputy governor John Gieve is expected to vote for a hike -- he indicated that he nearly did in September anyway, while David Blanchflower, who was the only rate-setter to vote to keep rates on hold in August, is expected to continue to argue against tightening. "Although a surprise on rates may be what households require, on balance we feel the MPC will probably be keen to wait until the November Inflation Report, to provide it with time to assess the news on global demand and incorporate the small downward revision to Q2 GDP," said Butler. On Aug 3, the then seven-member MPC voted 6-1 in favour of raising borrowing costs with the majority agreeing that a rate rise was needed to curb medium-term inflationary pressures. The subsequent Inflation Report from the MPC fuelled expectations that there will be further interest rate hikes, but not just yet, given that the central projection was for CPI inflation to remain above 2.0 pct in two years time even if rates remained unchanged at 4.75 pct. Vicky Redwood, UK economist at Capital Economics, said it is likely that the MPC will take out "more insurance" against the threat of a pick-up in wage growth in the January pay round by hiking again. Most analysts think that is likely to be the last hike, especially if the US growth slowdown becomes more pronounced and evident in the UK economic dataflow. "At this point we suspect that the Bank's fretfulness over inflation and potential second round effects will probably prevail," said Investec Securites chief UK economist Philip Shaw. There have been recent signs that economic activity has not been as strong as anticipated, most notably the downward revision to second quarter GDP growth to a quarterly rate of 0.7 pct from earlier estimates of 0.8 pct. "On balance then, we continue to expect a November rate increase, but we think that this is far from a done deal, and we would be tempted to reverse it should there be more evidence that the current signs of softness are genuine straws in the wind," he added.