Ratings agency Fitch has strip-ped the UK of its AAA rating due to its “weaker economic and fiscal outlook”.

The agency placed the UK on an AA+ rating, following Moody’s downgrade of UK debt in February.

Fitch said: “The downgrade of the UK’s sovereign ratings primarily reflects a weaker economic and fiscal outlook and hence the upward revision to Fitch’s medium-term projections for UK budget deficits and government debt.”

The downgrade will place further pressure on the Government ahead of next week’s first quarter GDP figures, which will reveal if Britain has managed to avoid an unprecedented triple-dip recession.

The agency now expects Government debt to peak at 101 per cent of GDP in 2015-16, only declining gradually in 2017-18. That is worse than its previous forecast of debt peaking at 97 per cent of GDP and declining in 2016-17.

Fitch, which waited until stock markets had closed before an-nouncing the downgrade, had already warned that the UK Government’s failure to stabilise debt below 100 per cent of GDP and set it on a firm downward path would trigger a downgrade.

Fitch slashed the UK’s growth forecast to 0.8 per cent this year. Next year it expects the UK economy to grow by 1.8 per cent, down from its previous two per cent forecast.

Earlier this week the International Monetary Fund also cut the UK’s growth forecast growth from one per cent to 0.7 per cent this year and 2014’s projection from 1.9 per cent to 1.5 per cent, noting the recovery was “progressing slowly”.

Economists largely expect the UK to eke out growth in the first three months of the year, after contracting by 0.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2013. Fitch blamed the UK’s slow recovery and high deficit on private and public sector “deleveraging” and the ongoing drag from the eurozone crisis.

IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer said the downgrade was “no surprise” and is likely to have minimal market impact. (AP)