British companies’ marketing budgets grew at their slowest rate in nearly two years in the final quarter of 2017, partly reflecting uncertainty createdby Brexit, a survey showed yesterday.

The IPA Bellwether report, conducted by IHS Markit, showed that 23.9 per cent of marketing executives raised their budgets during the quarter but pressure to cut costs and protect profitability led to 15.2 per cent of those surveyed cutting their marketing budgets.

The resulting net rise of 8.6 per cent was lower than an increase 9.9 per cent in the previous quarter and the lowest since the start of 2016, thereport said.

Rising inflation – driven largely by the pound’s fall since Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the EU – has squeezed household incomes, causing broader economic growth to slow.

“The current trend in growth... is nonetheless consistent with an economy undermined by ongoing Brexit uncertainty and an increasingly common ‘wait-and-see’ attitude among businesses and consumers alike,” Paul Smith, director at IHS Markit, said. He said that companies had adopted a similar attitude towards their marketing budgets and were willing to spend on “perceived cost-value areas such as digital”, but not on traditionally bigger-ticket media campaigns.