The Bank of England's means to boost the fragile British economy are limited as the euro zone crisis is weighing on growth, the Bank's chief economist Spencer Dale said in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

Dale told the Macclesfield Express -- in an interview conducted during last week's visit by the Monetary Policy Committee to northwest England -- that uncertainties about the global economy has lead companies to hold back investment and consumers to cut back spending.

The good news is that I am pretty confident that inflation will fall sharply by the beginning of the next year, so the pain that households have been feeling should start to ease. That will help to reduce some of the pressure of household budgets, Dale said.

But we can only do so much to support growth in the UK when so much of what is affecting our economy is what is happening with the rest of the world. I hope in Europe, where uncertainty is weighing on our economy, can be addressed quickly, he added.

The Bank launched a second round of quantitative easing earlier this month, pumping an additional 75 billion pounds into the economy in order to prevent a renewed recession.

(Reporting by Sven Egenter)

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