The UK officially in recession for the first time since the 1990s, as government figures reveal a second successive quarter of negative growth.

Gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 1.5% in the final quarter of 2008, following on from the previous quarters fall of 0.6%.

The news is not a surprise, as the UK has recently experienced large job losses, a depressed housing market and unemployment recently reached 1.92m.

At the end of last year it was believed that the economy would decline 1.5% in 2009, a figure that has now been amended to 2.1%.