Queen’s funeral bank holiday partially responsible for economic shrink that may signal recession, says ONS

The additional bank holiday for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II was partially responsible for a 0.6 per cent fall in GDP in September, amid warnings of the biggest recession in a century, the Office for National Statistics has said.

Britain’s economy declined 0.2 per cent from July to September, compared with the three months to June 2022.

The bank holiday on 19 September led to one fewer working day, which exaggerated the decline.

They are the biggest quarterly and monthly falls since early 2021 when the UK went into lockdown in the Covid pandemic.

Sign up for our newsletters.