Bank of England policymakers voted 8-1 to keep rates at a record-low 0.5% today, and most saw a relatively soft outlook for inflation.
This would suggest that the bank is in no hurry to raise interest rates.
The bank said cost pressures in Britain's labour market were rising too slowly for inflation to return to its 2% target, especially given the past strength of sterling.
Inflation would stay below 1% until spring 2016, the bank added.
UK inflation fell back to zero in August, but officials had been confident that robust domestic growth and the fading effect of last year's big oil price falls would cause it to bounce back towards its 2% target next year.
Official data last week showed unit labour cost growth jumped to 2.2% in the second quarter of 2015, more than double the rate the Bank of England had previously estimated, but it said this overstated the true strength of cost pressures.
"Increases in unit labour costs remained lower than would be consistent with CPI inflation returning sustainably to the 2% target, were they to persist at current rates," the bank said.
One of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, Ian McCafferty, dissented with the majority outlook and voted for a quarter-point rate rise for a third month in a row, saying inflation would probably overshoot its target due to building domestic cost pressures.
Financial markets have meanwhile pushed back their bets on when UK rates will start to rise to the tail end of next year or even early 2017, on the back of slowing job creation in the US.
But most economists still think a rate rise is likely early next year, though some are starting to forecast a slightly later move as doubts mount about whether the US Federal Reserve will tighten policy before the end of this year.
Policymakers were fairly relaxed about overseas developments, saying there was little evidence so far that a slowdown in emerging markets was having much impact on advanced economies, though some thought the outlook was a bit weaker than in the BoE's last set of quarterly forecasts in August.
Recent revisions to official data suggested that Britain's domestic economy was cooling slightly after a period of above average growth, which - combined with ongoing government spending cuts - "might presage a slightly weaker outlook".
But the data could also be consistent with existing Bank of England forecasts for growth to cool slightly as the economy recovered from the financial crisis.
Parts of the labour market were showing signs of skills shortages, but productivity was picking up, neutralising some of the impact of higher wages.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research yesterday estimated quarterly growth had fallen to 0.5% in the three months to September from 0.7% in the previous quarter, but kept its 2.5% forecast for 2015 as a whole.
The Bank of England said it expected growth of 0.6% in the third quarter of this year.
In August Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said the timing of the bank's first rate rise since 2006 would come into sharper focus around the turn of the year.
