Websites run by the UK's police forces are now a vital communications channel between the police and the public they protect and serve, so the quarterly Sitemorse benchmark of how efficiently those sites work is an important marker.

In our fourth-quarter 2012 survey we spotlight the sites of Cleveland, Dumfries and Galloway, and the North Wales Police as being the best from a group of more than 50, including each force in the UK.

The police are never out of the news, and their websites are the most important place to get their messages across before the inevitable filter of journalistic coverage. Our benchmark shows some sites are very good at getting those messages across, which has to mean that vital resources can be saved for "front-line" policing. We have also noticed improvements in the Metropolitan police website, which is now in the top five of the forces surveyed.

Congratulations to University Campus Suffolk (UCS) which has risen an impressive 58 places since our last Universities website survey in July to take first place this time. Our testing gave the UCS website a score of 8.7 out of a possible ten marks, a clear point ahead of any of the other 290 universities and colleges tested.

Second in our league table is the Bishop Grossetest University College and dropping one spot to third place is Leicester's De Montfort University, which claims its teaching boosts the UK economy by £389 million each year and creates more than 12,000 jobs.

In November we will be looking at the UK retail 500, consumer finance and Swiss banking sectors in our web benchmarks.

View all news articles