GDP growth confirmed at 0.8%

Britain’s economy has finally passed its pre-crisis peak with official figures showing growth of 0.8 per cent in the second quarter.

It is the same rate of expansion seen in the first three months of the year and confirms the UK as one of the top performing western economies.

But not all sectors of the economy are booming. While output grew by a solid 1 per cent in the services sector and a more modest 0.4 per cent in the production industries, agricultural output fell by 0.2 per cent while construction output declined by 0.5 per cent.

Scott Corfe, managing economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said the construction figure is surprisingly weak, given what some of the other measures of output in the sector show, and could be revised up in subsequent estimates.