Civils firms are still seeing their levels of work dwindle. That’s the main message from the latest survey from their trade body CECA.

The survey shows firms were slightly further away from growth in this spring that they were in the winter.

Rather than bore you with detail, the graph above (sourced from the CECA survey) shows the balance of civils firms saying workloads improved compared with the previous year against those that saw workload down over the past 10 years. So zero is no growth.

Frankly it’s not good news.

But on a slightly jollier note, the firms surveyed were on balance less pessimistic (-7) about future workload than they were in the previous survey in January (-10) and they were significanly less pessimistic than a year ago (-43).