Today sees the average price of unleaded petrol across the UK rise above £1 a litre for the first time ever.

Figures from PetrolPrices.com, show that both unleaded and diesel are at record highs, with unleaded now 100.08p per litre and diesel 103.32p Petrol prices have been rising steadily for the past year from a low of 85.9p on November 26, 2006 - up almost 15p in less than one year.

The cheapest petrol available at the time of writing is 94.9p at 24 stations nationally.

The most expensive petrol on sale today costs 109.9p at four stations.

"This is terrible news for the motorists," said Brendan McLoughlin , MD of PetrolPrices.com.

"It looks like speculators betting oil prices will rise are creating false demand and driving prices at the pumps higher. Hopefully we will see their bets go wrong and the price of oil fall back to bring us under the £1 mark again. In the meantime because we are in a rising market at the moment using PetrolPrices.com to find the cheapest stations is more effective than ever."

The web site has seen an increase in site traffic of more than 450 per cent today and over 6,500 new users have signed up today so far. The site already has just under one million users and has been operating since November 2005 but new users are now joining at the fastest rate for months.