{"id":583103,"date":"2026-05-14T06:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T06:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/583103\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T06:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T06:58:10","slug":"uk-economy-grows-by-0-6-in-first-three-months-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/583103\/","title":{"rendered":"UK economy grows by 0.6% in first three months of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;This is the most difficult period we&#8217;ve had&#8217;published at 06:54 BST<\/p>\n<p>06:54 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-qs9kpv-Contributor etflsgg2\">Adam Woods<br \/>Economics producer<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Boston wearing a purple soft play centre branded polo shirt and smiling with his arm around his sister's shoulders. She has long straight blonde hair and is also smiling wearing a red polo shirt with the same branding and a black cardigan\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f99b094c-7f78-419d-91da-53c95b70070e.jpg.webp\"  width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Brother and sister Boston and Kennady Mace run the Mace Playce indoor soft play centre in Chelmsford Essex<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">We&#8217;ve been in Chelmsford, Essex ahead of this morning&#8217;s figures to hear how people are feeling about the economy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Siblings Kennady and Boston Mace run a play centre and say they&#8217;ve noticed families cutting back spending on birthday parties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cWe\u2019ve got our own children so we appreciate how expensive a day out can be,\u201d Boston says. \u201cEverything\u2019s going up&#8230;we\u2019ve got a limit on what we can charge so the profit margin is getting smaller and smaller.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kennady says she has noticed families paying for activities but not food \u201cwhich is understandable&#8230;money\u2019s a lot tighter,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She and her brother have to balance \u201ckeeping everything reasonable\u201d for their customers with ensuring the business is viable, she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Boston says in their 13 years in business they have experienced the Covid pandemic, a fire, a flood and a theft, but \u201cthis seems [to be] the most difficult period we\u2019ve had\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8216;This is the most difficult period we&#8217;ve had&#8217;published at 06:54 BST 06:54 BST Adam WoodsEconomics producer Image caption,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-583103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}