The Bank of England will lower its benchmark rate by half a percentage point to 1.5 percent when it announces a policy decision today at 12 noon in London, according to a Bloomberg survey.

“We see room for sterling to weaken some more,” Brian Kim, a Stamford, Connecticut-based currency strategist at UBS AG, wrote in a research note yesterday. “Our economists are looking for a one percentage-point cut. Easing inflationary pressures and slowing economic activity give the BOE the room to cut.”

The pound may fall to $1.45 in three months, UBS forecast.

The British currency slid 23 percent against the euro last year, its biggest annual drop since the common currency’s debut. U.K. policy makers cut borrowing costs by more than the ECB with the British economy entering its first recession in 17 years.

The dollar may weaken before a report of U.S. non-farm payrolls tomorrow, which will probably show they fell 510,000 in December, bringing last year’s decline to 2.4 million, the most since 1945, according to a Bloomberg survey before Labor Department figures due tomorrow. The unemployment rate likely jumped to 7 percent, the highest level since 1993.