The Office for National Statistics says the economy expanded across the latest three-month period despite a small monthly dip in April, with services, computer programming and wholesale companies the main drivers of growth.
Real gross domestic product rose by 0.7 per cent in the three months to April 2026, the Office for National Statistics has announced — the fifth consecutive three-month on three-month improvement and up from 0.6 per cent in the three months to March and 0.5 per cent in the three months to February. The figures show the UK economy is 1.1 per cent larger than it was a year earlier, compared with 0.6 per cent growth recorded in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
April itself saw a small monthly fall in output, though the ONS said the broader three-month picture remained positive. Services carried most of the weight, with computer programming, marketing and wholesale companies among the strongest performers. Construction also showed further signs of recovery after a weak winter period — a sector with clear relevance for Kent, where building activity feeds into supply chains, employment and local authority planning pipelines.
Falls in research and development, sports industries and electricity generation partly offset growth elsewhere, the figures show. The recovery, in other words, isn’t uniform.
For Kent businesses, the sectoral picture matters more than the headline rate. Firms in services, wholesale and computer programming are more directly exposed to the industries the ONS identified as supporting growth. But the ONS has not published a Kent-specific GDP figure, so any direct read-across to local output remains unverified. Liz McKeown, Director of Economic Statistics at the ONS, commented on the release, though her full remarks were not included in the social media post that announced the figures. The wider ONS quarterly commentary links the stronger growth picture to household consumption, alongside ongoing pressures in the labour market and from inflation.
Source: @ONS