The rate of inflation measured on the consumer prices index (CPI) fell sharply in April from 2.9% to 2.4%.

This should be seen as good news for those operating in the housing market as a persistence of over target inflation may have hastened the time when interest rates return to more normal levels. And a fear of higher interest rates looming could dampen the ardour of potential buyers.

Faster falling inflation and the expectation of much lower inflation to come will also help to support the Bank’s decision on quantitative easing.

It is too early to expect to feel any real impact on inflation from the Bank’s moves to pump extra cash into the economy, but certainly this policy would have been viewed far more quizzically by sceptics had the rate of inflation not headed suitably sharply in the direction of the 2% target level.

The current policy of negligible interest rates and the application of quantitative easing is based on the Bank’s central projection that CPI inflation is most likely to drop to near zero as the year progresses, before rising gently back towards target level over the next two years.

The latest fall in CPI inflation appears to follow roughly the Bank’s expected path. But with huge conflicting forces within the economy, it is unwise to peg too much to one month’s figures.

There still remains considerable fear over the potency of the strong inflationary pressures created by the rate of fall in the pound.

For all the speculation there may be now about which way inflation is heading and the policy implications, I suspect that the path of CPI inflation will be at its most interesting as we come out of the summer months.

By then it should be a little clearer if CPI is likely to be heading toward deflationary territory or not. I suspect not.

But it will be interesting to see how the big forces likely to act on inflation play out over the next few months. Among these I would cast falling household bills and the imported inflation due to the lower value of the pound, along with the great unknown of how potent a force the experiment with quantitative easing will prove in buoying inflation.