£sign encoding -help!

I have a simple update set php sql function on my site where I can update the prices in my database for products on the webpage.

I have set the collation for all text fields in mysql to utf8_unicode_ci, and included

<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=UTF-8'/> 

in all my pages. When I submit the edit button however, if I enter £200 for example, in the database instead of &pound;200 it enters &Acirc;&pound;200.

I have read through countless forums on the issue and dont know what more I need to do to get this working - also, most of the discussions are at least 3 years old. Is there any new function I might be able to use to get this very small, but very frustrating glitch fixed?!

Thanks JD

Add this line of PHP code, immediately after connecting to the MySQL database:

mysql_set_charset('utf8');