UK Recovery Strengthens as Business Investment Picks Up

Britain's economy grew by 0.8% in the first three months of 2014, the Office for National Statistics has confirmed.

In its second estimate of GDP, the ONS said its preliminary reading was correct and the pace of the recovery had increases slightly on the quarter before when growth was 0.7%.

According to the Bank of England, the UK economy will grow by around 3% across the whole of 2014 as all major sectors – construction, manufacturing and services – see output increase.

As a result, it looks likely that the Bank of England will raise interest rates at some point in 2015. The base rate has been at its all-time-low of 0.5% for five years as part of an ultra-loose monetary policy to keep credit cheap and flowing to businesses and consumers.

A large part of the UK economic recovery so far has been the resurgent housing market, where low interest rates and schemes such as Help to Buy have made mortgages cheaper and so fuelled demand.

In turn, house prices are spiralling because of the dearth in supply. This has then triggered a boom in the construction sector, where builders chase profits from higher house prices by sharply increasing their residential work.

But the Bank of England and Treasury want to see the recovery shift in its reliance on the housing market and the service sector – which accounts for around three quarters of GDP – and towards business investment and trade.

There are positive signs for both. The global economy is also recovering, including a tentative rise in output across the troubled eurozone as a whole, so demand for British exports may begin to pick up.

And figures from the ONS show an 8.7% rise in business investment between the first quarter of 2013 and the opening three months of 2014, to £32.8bn.