Singular substitutions of constant length

We consider primitive aperiodic substitutions of constant length q and prove that, in order to have a Lebesgue component in the spectrum of the associated dynamical system, it is necessary that one of the eigenvalues of the substitution matrix equals $\sqrt{q}$ in absolute value. The proof is based on results of M. Queff\'elec, combined with estimates of the local dimension of the spectral measure at zero.