British economy slows to 0.3 percent in a quarter

British quarterly GDP growth fell to 0.3 percent last December, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said Wednesday.

The figure is down from 0.4 percent quarterly growth seen in last month's release, and a fall from 0.6 percent seen in November's figures.

Jack Meaning, research fellow at NIESR, said: "The current figures are quite heavily weighed down by a contraction in December on a month-on-month basis."

The quite sharp fall in the rolling three-monthly figure is part of the "inherent volatility" in the series, said Meaning. In November, it was at 0.6 percent and now it is 0.3 percent.

Meaning added: "If you are looking at this in the context of the longer series, we would expect volatility from month to month. But it has not been as volatile in recent history as we would have thought, so this is just a part of the natural volatility that we would expect to see."

The 0.4 percent growth that NIESR expects for the first quarter of 2016 is much the same as for the first quarter last year, said Meaning.

"We still think that growth is close to the potential rate," he added.