{"id":35933,"date":"2026-05-14T07:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/35933\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T07:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:01:14","slug":"uk-economy-records-strongest-quarterly-growth-in-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/35933\/","title":{"rendered":"UK economy records strongest quarterly growth in a year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK economy has recorded the strongest quarterly growth in a year over the first three months of 2026 with a surprise spurt in activity after the Iran war began, figures show.<\/p>\n

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 0.6% between January and March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.<\/p>\n

This was higher than the 0.5% growth that most economists had been expecting, and marks the strongest since the first quarter of 2025 when GDP also increased by a revised 0.6%.<\/p>\n

The ONS also said GDP increased by 0.3% in March, surprising economists who had been expecting growth to slow following the onset of the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Chancellor Rachel Reeves responded to the figures to warn against threatening the \u201cstability\u201d of the economy, amid uncertainty over Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s future as leader.<\/p>\n

She said in a statement: \u201cThe choices I have made as Chancellor mean our economy is in a stronger position as we deal with the costs of the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow is not the time to put our economic stability at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo do so would leave families and business worse off.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, this Government is getting on with the job of building an economy that is stronger, more resilient and prepared for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rachel Chancellor Rachel Reeves warned against \u2018threatening\u2019 the UK economy amid uncertainty over the future of the Prime Minister (Carl Court\/PA) \u00b7 Carl Court <\/p>\n

The services industry delivered a boost to the economy during the first quarter, while manufacturing and construction output also increased, according to the ONS.<\/p>\n

The ONS also made a series of revisions to previous datasets.<\/p>\n

February\u2019s growth figure was revised down to 0.4% in February, from the 0.5% previous estimate, and January\u2019s was revised to show no growth, from a previous 0.1% increase.<\/p>\n

GDP for the final quarter of 2025 was also revised up to 0.2% from the previous estimate of 0.1%.<\/p>\n

ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: \u201cGrowth picked up in the first quarter of the year, led by broad-based increases across the services sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin that wholesale, computer programming and advertising performed particularly well.<\/p>\n

\u201cProduction also grew slightly, while construction returned to growth, though only partly reversing weakness at the end of last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some economists said the figures pointed to signs of so-called \u201cfront loading\u201d in March, suggesting that businesses and consumers were bringing forward activity ahead of expected shortages in supply or price increases.<\/p>\n

The ONS said a range of industries were citing the Iran war as a reason why activity was brought forward, including manufacturing, car sales and rental and leasing firms, while others said it had knocked sales in March.<\/p>\n

It also noted retailers reporting that motorists were stocking up on fuel as prices rose sharply.<\/p>\n

Suren Thiru, chief economist for the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales), said: \u201cThis strong first quarter is\u00a0probably the\u00a0high point for the economy this year with output likely to halve\u00a0in the second quarter\u00a0as surging energy costs suffocate\u00a0activity, despite a short-term boost from firms stockpiling in anticipation of shortages and price\u00a0rises.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK economy has recorded the strongest quarterly growth in a year over the first three months of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16522,16624,1312,2678,182,5,431,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-35933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-gross-domestic-product","9":"tag-growth-figure","10":"tag-office-for-national-statistics","11":"tag-ons","12":"tag-rachel-reeves","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-uk-economy","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116571647705230357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}