The ONS said the fall in iron and steel manufacturing alone dragged down overall industrial production by 0.4 percentage points.

Total production output fell by 0.5pc in February compared with the same month a year ago, the largest drop since August 2013.

Separate ONS data showed Britain's trade gap in goods with the EU stood at £23.8bn in the three months to February, which is the widest since records began in 1998.

The ONS said this reflected a 1.3pc drop in exports and a 1.1pc rise in imports.

The overall trade deficit with the rest of the world, including services, widened by £3.8bn to £13.7bn, which is the biggest since March 2008.

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, expects the recent decline in industrial output to have knocked 0.16 percentage points off the country's overall growth in the first three months of the year.

The UK economy grew by 0.6pc in the final three months of 2015, according to official data.

However, closely-watched surveys of the manufacturing, services and construction industries this month suggest the economy expanded by 0.4pc in the first quarter.

"The industrial slump places more of the onus on the services sector to drive growth, but the weakness of [recent surveys of the services sector] in both February and March suggests that all sectors now are struggling," said Mr Tombs.