The latest quarterly national accounts provide yet more worrying reading for the construction industry.

Firstly, the revisions made by the statisticians have just made the pretty poor figures originally released look worse.

GDP growth in the first quarter is now officially 0.3% compared with 0.4% (to put that in context 0.1% of annual GDP is about 1.4 billion), so expect the assumptions of the forecasts you see to take a downward shift.

Construction growth in quarter one was also revised down to 0.4% from 0.5%. Not good, but the more worrying aspect is the size of the drop in output growth from the previous quarter when construction grew at 0.9%.

Worse still, the collapse of housebuilding will not really hit the figures until the second quarter, so we can expect bad news when the Q2 figures for construction are published.

Secondly, there were a shed load of other figures pubished within the national accounts to generate nagging feelings. Real disposable income dropped 1% in the first quarter of 2008 and the household savings ratio has dropped to its lowest level since 1958.

These poor numbers will feed through into the prospect for construction in numerous ways, but most immediately the impact is likely to be felt in the private sector housing RMI figures.

I’d suggest forgetting the old adage that if people can’t move they spend money doing up their existing place. Fine in theory, but to pay the builder they will need the wherewithall many clearly are lacking. And I fancy, that with construction input prices also on the rise, many who may have been tempted will think again.