UK manufacturing growth accelerated slightly in March to its fastest pace in eight months, a survey has shown.

However, the sector's pace of expansion remains well adrift of rates recorded in the first half of last year, according to the survey from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply.

And the pace of employment growth eased in March.

CIPS's headline purchasing managers' index for manufacturing, which measures changes in output, new orders, employment, suppliers' delivery times and stocks of goods purchased, rose from 54 in February to 54.4 in March, signalling a modest acceleration of growth by moving further above the level of 50 deemed to separate expansion from contraction. The index had been at 56.7 in June last year.

Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compiler Markit, said: "The sector is on course for output growth ranging around 0.6 per cent over the opening quarter as a whole, a positive contribution to broader economic expansion and its best performance since the first half of last year."

He added: "Scratching beneath the surface of the numbers, we can see that the drivers of growth are heavily skewed towards domestic consumers, as consumer goods producers reported by far the steepest expansions of both production and new orders."