IT’s hard to find evidence of green shoots in a week when it was revealed that house prices fell, again, in May, more than 800 employees at British Airways agreed to temporarily work for no pay and Corus announced plant closures that will lead to 2,000 redundancies.

There are, however, some encouraging signs. Doug McWilliams, head of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said that several large high-street retailers he advises have begun looking at bringing back their manufacturing to the UK from China.

The recession left many firms with huge quantities of merchandise that was difficult to shift. By bringing operations closer to home, they can halve the time it takes to get new products on to the shelves and react quicker when sentiment changes. McWilliams said: “A couple of my clients are looking into this. And, obviously, there is a good chance that when things get looked at they end up happening.”

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, meanwhile, provided a not altogether dire outlook for the UK. It said the British economy was still very much in a “deep recession”, but revised upward its forecast for next year.

In March, the group had predicted that the UK could trundle along at 0% growth. Last week it rejigged that figure to a 0.2% increase, hardly a figure to set the world alight, but it could mean that we have reached the bottom of the downturn.

There have also been some jobs, briefly lost, that have been recovered. Total, the French oil giant, reinstated 647 workers it fired after they went on strike in protest at its decision to lay off 51 workers earlier this month. In a deal reached with the unions last week, the company agreed to rehire them as part of a settlement that will be put to workers on Monday.

On the housing front it is not all bad. According to land registry figures, while overall prices dropped, half the UK’s regions produced modest price rises. And the 0.2% overall fall, the same as the month before, was the lowest in 18 months.

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