Britain’s economy grew 0.6% in the second quarter of 2024, in line with economists’ expectations and building on a rapid 0.7% recovery in the first quarter of the year after a shallow recession in the second half of 2023, official figures showed.

In June alone, Britain’s level of gross domestic product was unchanged, also in line with economists’ forecasts in a Reuters poll, and compared with a year earlier it was 0.7% higher, the Office for National Statistics said.

“These figures confirm that the UK’s recovery from recession picked up steam in the second quarter, despite strike action and wet weather causing activity to flatline in June,” said Suren Thiru, economics director at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

However, he said he expected growth would slow in the second half of 2024 due to interest rates which remain near a 16-year high, despite this month’s Bank of England cut, and also persistent supply constraints and slower wage growth.

There was little immediate market reaction to the data.

At the start of the month the BoE raised its annual growth forecast for 2024 to 1.25% from 0.5% due to a stronger-than-expected start to the year and an expectation of 0.7% quarter-on-quarter growth in the three months to June.

But it was less upbeat about the outlook for the remainder of 2024, seeing growth slow to 0.4% in the third quarter and 0.2% in the final three months of the year – which it views as closer to the economy’s underlying growth rate.

Britain’s economy has grown slowly since the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding just 2.3% between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2024.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he wanted the economy to achieve annual growth of 2.5% when campaigning in the run-up to July 4’s election – a rate that Britain has not regularly reached since before the 2008 financial crisis.

Finance minister Rachel Reeves set a more formal target that Britain should enjoy the fastest per capita growth in gross domestic product among the Group of Seven advanced economies for two consecutive years.