Macroeconomic performance has been amongst the most resilient in the OECD over the last decade, but policy-makers currently face a slowdown in growth, in part caused by an overdue cooling of the housing market, as well as the need to reduce the government deficit. The former raises the issue of the risk of a more pronounced housing market correction as well the need to take measures to improve housing supply. The latter raises issues of how to raise efficiency in priority areas of public service provision more rapidly, particularly in health and education, as well as longer-term issues regarding pensions. However, the most important challenges relate to improving productivity performance, where international benchmarking suggests that priority areas for attention should be the general level of skills, innovation performance and transport infrastructure. While labour utilisation is generally high, there may be scope for further improvement by helping many of those currently claiming disability-related benefits to find work.