Official figures show that the UK economy shrank by a worse than expected 0.2% in the final quarter of last year.
The figures were released by the Office for National Statistics. Analysts had forecast that gross domestic product would shrink by 0.1%.
It was the first quarterly contraction since the fourth quarter of 2010, when there was a 0.5% drop as economic activity was hit by freezing weather.
The drop in output was driven by a 0.9% fall in manufacturing, a 4.1% drop in electricity and gas production as warm weather caused people to turn down heating, and a 0.5% fall in the construction sector. The ONS figures also show that the key services sector ground to a halt.
There is also likely to have been a small impact from the public sector strikes on November 30, when nearly a million working days were lost.
