The U.K. pound slipped against the U.S. dollar in early Friday trading after the country's official statistics office trimmed its final tally of second quarter GDP growth.

The Office for National Statistics said the quarterly pace of growth for U.K. economy, the fifth largest in the world, slowed to 1.5% in the three months ending in June, down sharply from a previous estimate of 1.8%

"There was a notable slowdown in growth in the first half of 2017," the ONS said. "The often buoyant services sector was the only area to grow in the second quarter."

Sterling was marked 0.45% lower against the greenback in the opening hours of London trading and changing hands at 1.3380 each by 10:00am local time.

The pound has risen some 4% against the dollar over the past three months as investors re-price interest rate increases from the BoE, which has been concerned about above-target inflation thanks to the pound's post Brexit vote slump.

"What we have said, that if the economy continues on the track that it's been on, and all indications are that it is, in the relatively near term we can expect that interest rates would increase somewhat," BoE Governor Mark Carney told the BBC Radio 4 program Friday.

The Bank's next rate setting meeting is scheduled for Nov. 2 in London and a majority of market analysts and currency traders expect its Monetary Policy Committee to lift its key lending rate by 25 basis points to 0.5%.

However, Carney also warned earlier this week that the BoE would not be able to mitigate the economic hit Britain was likely to take as a result of its exit from the European Union in a speech that puzzled some market observers.

"Even though monetary policy cannot prevent the weaker real income growth likely to accompany the transition to new trading arrangements with the EU, it can influence how this hit to incomes is distributed between job losses and price rises," Carney said.

Cautioning on slowing growth while simultaneously signalling interest rate hikes suggests both the pound, and Britain's broader economic data set, will continue to remain volatile in the months ahead as the country's EU exit talks with officials in Brussels grind forward.