Antonia Sanchez-Toomey runs Tailormade Living in Enfield, north London, a company selling items such as scented candles and accessories for the home.
The BBC spoke to Ms Sanchez-Toomey ahead of the data to understand how a typical small business is faring in the current economic climate.
She says it is businesses like hers that suffer when the economy shrinks and people cut back on luxuries.
“We sell non-essential products,” she says.
“People are cutting back on those sorts of things. So they might still come in for a gift, but if they would buy a gift and then something for themselves, it’s the ‘something for themselves’ that’s not happening anymore.”
She says in 2022, sales were down year-on-year and down by about 40% over Christmas, which she says was a shock.
“And then we’ve just had our quietest January ever,” she says. “So we’ve had to make lots of cuts within the business. And that has affected some of my team members. And I’ve just got this real sense that consumer confidence is at an all-time low.”
Downturn
Most forecasters now predict 2023 will see a milder downturn than previously expected because of a fall in energy prices. But some think the UK will avoid a technical recession completely.
There was an upbeat take from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an economic think tank, which forecast that the UK will swerve a recession.
But both the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund were gloomier, expecting the UK economy to shrink in 2023.
The UK economy is more sensitive to gas prices, to rising interest rates and has a specific issue about the failure of the workforce to return to its pre-pandemic size.
The latest numbers and the early evidence from this year could still pile on the pressure for the government to do more over the workforce and over the further rise in domestic energy bills coming in the spring.
Mr Hunt will outline his plans for taxation and spending in the Budget on 15 March.
Separate statistics from the ONS showed that the UK’s annual trade deficit for goods and services widened by £85bn to £108bn in 2022 when compared with the year before mainly due to a rise in the value of imports.
This was largely driven by the soaring cost of food and fuel.