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Britain remains the last major economy in recession after official data Tuesday showed the country's output shrank by 0.2 percent in the third quarter.
The Office for National Statistics said that British gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.2 percent during the July-September period compared with the previous three-month period.
It had previously put the contraction at 0.3 percent, while analysts' consensus forecast had been for a revision this time around showing GDP shrinkage of only 0.1 percent.
Britain officially ends 2009 as the only top economy in recession after the eurozone, France, Germany, Japan and the United States have all emerged from a deep downturn that was sparked by the global financial crisis.
"Gross domestic product contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009," the ONS said in a statement.
"This has been revised from a fall of 0.3 percent in the previous estimate of GDP, due to upward revisions to construction partly offset by downward revisions to production and services.
"GDP remains 5.1 percent lower than the third quarter of 2008," added the statistics office.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government, heading for defeat in next year's general election according to polls, believes that the country has returned to growth during the current fourth quarter.
Markets must wait for the release of official data in late January to see if this has indeed been the case.
Britain's economy, which is struggling with high unemployment and massive public debt caused by the financial crisis, has contracted for six quarters in a row -- its longest recession since records began in 1955.
However there was better news for another European nation on Tuesday, as Denmark announced it had emerged from recession in the third quarter thanks to its economy growing by 0.6 percent compared with the preceding three months.
The technical definition of a recession is two or more quarters running of contraction, on a quarter-by quarter comparison.
