Businesses ‘feeling the pinch’, financial expert sayspublished at 06:55 GMT
06:55 GMT
We’ve just heard from Kathleen Brooks, research director at the trading platform XTB, ahead of this morning’s ONS release.
She tells BBC News that she expects 2025 to have ended on “quite a soft note”, adding that “a lot of businesses are really feeling the pinch at the moment”.
That said, there are a couple of “bright spots”, she says, adding that tourism is meant to have ended the year “on a high”, while the recovery at Jaguar Land Rover in November following an earlier cyber attack is expected to have delivered a “boost to manufacturing”.
Despite some “little green shoots”, she says she is not expecting a strong end to the year overall.
While there has been a “bit of a bounce” in consumer and manufacturing activity since the Budget, according to Brooks, she says the private sector remains “very, very weak”.