A leading British think tank has put the nation's economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 at 0.3 percent.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said Wednesday that the economy returned to growth in the final quarter, ending 18 months of recession.
"GDP fell by 4.8 percent in 2009. This is a bigger fall than in any year of the great depression and is Britain's biggest contraction since 1921," said NIESR in a statement.
Output in the UK fell sharply for 12 months until March last year and has not changed very much since then, although evidence of a recovery is starting to emerge, said the think tank.
In addition, overall industrial production in November last year rose 0.4 percent from the previous month, slightly stronger than expected, according to the figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday./.