Britain’s economy racked up its fastest growth in more than six years in early 2014, but a Bank of England interest rate rise is not imminent while the country makes up ground lost after the financial crisis.

Output jumped 3.1 per cent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the biggest rise since the late 2007, the Office for National Statistics said.

Gross domestic product rose a quarterly 0.8 per cent, gaining a bit of speed from the last three months of 2013. There were also signs of a broader recovery as manufacturing picked up.

But both the yearly and quarterly growth figures were slightly below forecasts in a Reuters poll. The pound weakened and British government bond prices briefly rose after the data.

“There does not seem to be much of a case for the Monetary Policy Committee to push official interest rates up this year, and indeed we continue to suspect that the idea of a tightening can be shelved until after the election in May next year,” said Philip Shaw, an economist with Investec Bank.

The data should help Prime Minister David Cameron as he tries to convince voters to return his Conservative Party to power.

“Today’s figures show that Britain is coming back,” Finance Minister George Osborne said. “But we can’t take that for granted. We have to carry on working through our long-term economic plan.”

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview published earlier yesterday that the economic recovery is starting to broaden and there are early signs that it will be sustainable.

But another policymaker, Ian McCafferty, warned of the risks of raising interest rates too late if the bank is to carry out its plan to raise rates only gradually.

The economy remained 0.6 per cent smaller than it was in the first quarter of 2008. Excluding the oil and gas sector, which is in decline, output was 0.3 per cent higher than its previous peak.