* BoE rates to stay at 0.5 percent, decision due 1100 GMT
* Arch-hawk Sentance to maintain rate hike call at final MPC
* Weale and Dale less likely to maintain vote for rate rise
By David Milliken
LONDON, May 5 (Reuters) - The Bank of England looks set to keep interest rates at a record low 0.5 percent later on Thursday, after a string of disappointing data releases over the past month have pointed to an anaemic economic recovery.
Inflation is double the BoE's target at 4 percent, and a new set of internal quarterly forecasts available to the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee is likely to show it peaking even higher in the coming months at just under 5 percent.
But the majority of the MPC have long insisted that Britain's above-target inflation is due to a series of one-off shocks, and tepid first-quarter growth and several sub-par April industry surveys are likely to strengthen their conviction that domestic inflation pressures are minimal.
"Growth and inflation developments appear to have killed off any prospect of an interest rate hike," said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer, who has pushed back his own forecast for a BoE rate rise to November.
"The MPC's concern over the underlying strength of the UK economy and its ability to withstand the fiscal squeeze that is increasingly kicking in from the start of April has likely been heightened by the muted rebound in GDP growth," he added.
Even before last week's GDP data -- which showed that British output stagnated over the past six months -- a Reuters poll of economists showed the overwhelming majority expected rates to stay on hold.
Since then, financial markets have pushed back bets on a rate rise to the end of this year. April purchasing managers' surveys for the manufacturing and construction sectors suggest that growth has slowed at the start of the second quarter, and the equivalent service sector survey is due at 0828 GMT.
END OF SENTANCE
A decision to keep rates at 0.5 percent -- where they have been since the depths of recession in March 2009 -- will be a deep disappointment to Andrew Sentance, who steps down at the end of the month after almost 5 years on the MPC.
Over the past year, he has argued that the British public and financial markets are losing faith in the MPC's commitment to a 2 percent inflation target, and that supposedly one-off inflation pressures are likely to prove persistent.
A few weeks ago, a May rate rise looked a strong possibility. But now even Sentance's allies, external MPC member Martin Weale and BoE chief economist Spencer Dale seem to be having second thoughts.
Weale told Reuters two weeks ago that growth had proved weaker than he had hoped when he first voted to raise rates in January.
And Dale said in a speech a month ago that his call for higher rates was partly based on the assumption growth would be back to normal this year.
This assumption is likely to come under strain in the May Inflation Report, which it is Dale's job to supervise.
The BoE's growth forecasts are already seen as too high by most economists, and exceed those from Britain's fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which sees growth of 1.7 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2012.
BoE Governor Mervyn King has long been doubtful about the need for higher interest rates to control inflation, and in Brussels on Monday he warned of the dangers faced by heavily indebted countries if long-term interest rates rose.
The increasing contrast between the BoE's stance and that of the European Central Bank -- which raised rates last month and looks set to do so again -- has pushed the premium which British government bonds pay over German ones to a two-year low.
Sterling is also at a 13-month low against the euro and a six-month low against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, increasing the cost of imports.
(Editing by Ron Askew)