The U.K. economy grew a meager 0.1% in the third quarter, according to preliminary figures from the Office for National Statistics, marking one of the last major pieces of economic data to be released ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Economists polled by Reuters expected the economy to have grown 0.2% over the July-September period, following an expansion of 0.3% in the second quarter.
Month-on-month, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, following no growth in August (which was revised down from a 0.1% expansion in the ONS’ previous data).
“Growth slowed further in the third quarter of the year with both services and construction weaker than in the previous period. There was also a further contraction in production,” Liz McKeown, director of Economic Statistics at the ONS, said on Thursday.
Across the quarter as a whole manufacturing drove the weakness in production, the ONS said, highlighting the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover, which halted production for five weeks, as a major source of economic disruption.
