UK fiscal headroom £15bn under current budget rules, vs £15.2bn expected

A £200 million miss against a £15 billion cushion is a rounding error in fiscal terms, so the headline number matters less than what it signals about the fragility of the buffer itself. The margin is thin enough that small shifts in forecasts or borrowing costs could erase it, which keeps the focus on whether the government's headroom holds through the next round of fiscal events. For markets, the takeaway is less about the size of the gap than about how little room exists for error.