The UK’s GDP is estimated to have fallen by 0.2% in December, new figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have indicated.

This follows 0.7% growth in November, which the ONS has revised down from 0.9%.

Services were the main contributor to GDP’s 0.2% fall in December, detracting 0.4 percentage points from GDP growth. The ONS noted that this was partially offset by a positive 0.1 percentage point contribution from construction, while production made a negligible contribution.

In December 2021, the UK’s GDP was estimated to have equalled its pre-pandemic level from February 2020. This followed November’s figure which remains the first month that GDP recovered to above its pre-COVID levels, by 0.3%, which the ONS has now revised down from the previous estimate of being 0.7% above.

With the latest release including several revisions to the monthly GDP data back to January 2021, the ONS confirmed that GDP in Q4 2021 was still below its pre-pandemic level from Q4 2019, by 0.4%.

Commenting on the figures, Hargreaves Lansdown fund manager, Steve Clayton, said: “If we look at the year as a whole, UK output grew by 7.5%, the fastest clip since World War Two. Don’t get carried away though, because 2020 was easily the worst year for the economy and taken as a whole, it has been a pretty disastrous period for economic growth.

“Longer term, the UK’s biggest challenge still seems to be productivity growth, which has been lacklustre for over a decade. Until that is fixed the UK economy is likely to have a pretty humdrum underlying pace of growth.”

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