There will be little cheering from the aisles as a result of the slightly better than first estimated growth in the UK economy.

There was always the strong possibility that, having expected and mentally banked the revision to the recorded rise in first quarter UK from 0.2% (the statisticians’ first stab at GDP made in April) to 0.3%, there might just be some disappointment at the figures when they are held up to the light.

And on that note, I was interested to see Jonathan Loynes, Chief European Economist at Capital Economics, express some qualms about the figures pointing out that much of the growth has come from rebuilding stocks and from Government spending. The impetus provided by both will be short lived and in the case of Government is set to reverse quite markedly.

As far as the estimation of construction output goes the figures were equally dull. The industry is still, in the guestimation of the national statisticians, in recession with first quarter growth revised up from a fall of 0.7% to a fall of 0.5%.

What is more pertinent is that the figures from now on will be heavily influenced by the sucking out of Government spending.

We have already has a snifter of the cuts to come when we have a full scale Budget and what caught my eye in yesterday’s announcements by the new Treasury team was the £1.7 billion penned in for delaying and cutting projects.

With the public sector spending more than £40 billion a year on construction you need only delay work for a couple of weeks and you notch up best part of that target figure in the annual output figures.

My guess is that the Treasury will benefit by more that the £1.7 billion target. There will be within the civil service a very changed culture from pushing through projects to a presumption in favour of delay and questioning. This will, I suspect, have quite a profound impact on the flow of public sector work.

So, we are then left with the question of how fast the private sector can grow to fill the gap left by the shrinking public sector.

There are of course sectors of construction, mainly those related to sustainability and energy security, which might well be buoyant in the coming years.

But, if the industry overall is not to plough deeper and deeper into recession we will need the economy to grow far faster than the 0.3% quarter-on-quarter growth seen in the first quarter of this year.