Inflation rates have hit a 10-year high - courtesy of soaring energy and fuel prices - but just what does it mean for you?

A lot is made of our rate of inflation - and it can be baffling for many. But, in essence, it's very straight forward, acting as a barometer to gauge the health of the economy. So what is it exactly and why should you care?

Inflation, as the word suggests, tracks the rising cost of a wide range of goods and services month-on-month. If they shoot up in value then inflation balloons as a result.

The way the figure is determined is by a bit of 'mystery shopping' by the Office for National Statistics.

Each month, it collects around 180,000 prices for around 700 items and works out an average price. The goods in its 'basket' include everything from housing and household services to transport, eating and drinking out, to household goods and food. In short, the sort of things we all regularly buy every month.

This allows it to compile what is known as the Consumer Price Index (CPI). So if the price of the goods it surveys goes up by 3% then inflation is recorded as rising accordingly.

The government aims to keep the figure to around 2%. This provides stability and gives us all some reassurance that the rise in prices won't be felt too hard in our bank balance.

Should inflation - so the increase of those goods - go up too quickly, it presents a problem to both businesses, in terms of setting their prices, and for us, as consumers, as it starts to bite into our household budgets.

If it were to fall - so the goods get cheaper, which sounds like a good thing - it can pile pressure on the businesses relying on certain levels of income through their pricing and result in job losses and company failures.

So where are we now?

According to the latest ONS figures, inflation for October was 4.2% - an unexpectedly high leap and up from 3.1% in September. And, you'll note, more than double that 2% target.

It is the highest level seen in this country since December 2011.

This, of course, will not come as a surprise to many of us.

Fuel at the pumps has shot up to almost record highs in recent weeks and shows little sign of slowing. While the cost of gas, in particular, has sent the cost of heating our homes soaring - a situation likely to hit many hard in the pocket as we look to whack on the radiators for the winter months.

Restaurants saw a cut in VAT lifted which meant prices rose and anyone in the market for a second-hand car will not need telling how expensive they are now.

In addition, the well publicised supply chain crisis has taken its toll too. If lorry drivers, for example, need higher wages to ensure goods reach our shelves, well many firms will seek to pass that cost onto the end consumer - namely us. Ditto if raw material prices rise, so do the costs we pay at the till or on our bills. Good shortages also drive up demand and prices.

As a result, even a slight price rise across a range of goods, can see that inflation figure rising.

There's also, of course, the small issue of the pandemic.

Given the global disruption it caused last year, inflation figures in the UK fell below 1% but as economies have reopened consumer demand has ramped up.

Therefore, it is expected we will continue to see a rise in inflation until the kinks caused by Covid are slowly but surely ironed out.

In fact, it is estimated that inflation could get as high as 5% by next spring.

What doesn't help is that many employers are still nursing losses or big drops in income caused by the pandemic. As a consequence, wage rises will seem like a distant dream for many.

And that means the chances are your disposable income will continue to shrink for the months ahead. Which isn't a very cheery prospect with Christmas just around the corner.

So what can be done to control inflation and prevent it soaring too high?

One key weapon in the Bank of England's arsenal is the raising of interest rates.

They are, currently, at historically low levels which is good news for those of us paying mortgages - but not for those hoping for a return on their savings.

Slight increases of the current 0.1% interest rate would almost certainly be followed by high street banks upping their lending rates. This would mean securing credit is more challenging, monthly mortgage repayments rise and thus the amount of spending across the board is lowered. In turn, this causes us to keep our powder dry when it comes to splashing our and causes economic growth to slow as demand for goods drops and prices follow.

As a result, inflation should be slowed down to closer to the 2% level the government has tasked the Bank of England with maintaining.

Hence the reason you will hear so much talk of inflation and interest rates - they act as a balancing force to one another.

As mentioned, the next few months are unlikely to see much relief, which means it may be wise to re-evaluate how much you want to splash out this festive season given the rising costs ahead.

Lauren Abbott tackled the school lunch shop

In January, furore erupted when a mother homeschooling her children and in receipt of free school meal vouchers shared an image of the government funded family food parcel she'd been given.

Everyone from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to footballer and campaigner Marcus Rashford was asked their view on the sparse looking supply of items left at her door, while thousands took to social media to question why so many families in a country as wealthy as Britain are left struggling to feed their offspring.

And since those bleak early days of the first wave of the pandemic it seems that issues connected to feeding families have not drifted far from news and political agendas.

From the controversy over free school meals and the question of provision in holidays to steadily rising food prices, shortages caused by a complicated mixture of Brexit and the pandemic and more recently the £20 cut to Universal Credit placing further strain on household bills - it feels like the family food shop has perhaps never undergone so much scrutiny in recent times.

In response to those pictures circulating in January, we took the government's £30 budget for two children eligible for free school meals, to see how much food and how many meals we could craft.

More than 30 items were purchased from supermarket Asda - including everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to meat and pasta. It came to £26.56 in total.

But how much has the rise in inflation - and to a certain extent the ongoing issues with UK supply chains - affected that same shopping list and its availability today?

Unsurprisingly that same haul of food does not come in under the £30 that it did more than 18 months ago.

While there is the odd surprise among the price points - a 30p reduction in the price of a bag of clementines for example - many foods on our original list have seen between 2p and more than 20p added to their price.

Among them is pasta - where the smallest bag of fusilli available is now 79p and a big step from the less than 50p it was at the start of last year.

Prices for meat paint a similar story with both the honey roast ham and eight sausages in our original haul both now costing more - 11p extra on the sausages alone.

Tinned items - including fruit and tuna - have also seen a few extra pence added here and there, as well as baked beans costing around 2p more for each tin. Salad tomatoes have also leapt to £1.50 for 12 compared to £1.36 when we bought them in January 2021.

The announcement that inflation is at its highest since 2011 is not unsurprising when you look at our shop today.

With the exception of our original choice of bread and crisps, most food was available to buy which is no doubt reassuring, but the price of that original lockdown shop now costs more than £30 - £31.36 to be exact.

And that's only around a fiver extra on an extremely basic £30 shop bought with two children in mind. For households spending more than £250 a month on food to feed their families those increases become much harder to swallow.

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