Cleveland Police is back at the top of the latest Sitemorse INDEX covering the UK’s top police forces.

The North-East force climbed 13 places since Q2 to get back into top place, with Merseyside Police, who have topped the table for the last two quarters, down to fourth position. Cleveland are in the unique position of having consistently topping the Sitemorse Police INDEX for a number of years, always placed in the top three.

The web is increasingly important for the UK’s Police forces, where a successful site needs to be fully functional, meet legal requirements such as accessibility, perform well and – if the force really wants to engage the public who live and work in its area - the site needs to ensure users have a positive experience to encourage them to come back.

That’s why the Sitemorse Q3 2014 INDEX ranking just under 50 UK police force websites is an important benchmark, spotlighting the authorities that are currently leading the field with the best-working websites in the sector.

The Cleveland Police website was top of the Sitemorse table before dropping to 8th and then 14th position in recent quarters. Its score of 7.1 out of a possible ten marks in our testing brings it back to the top of the table, slightly ahead of the City of London Police, which continues an upward trend to second place. At the end of last year, the City of London website stood at 20th position, but a consistent improvement over the last few months has taken it almost to the top.

Nottinghamshire Police, with a score of 6/10 are third-placed and have again improved their performance since the last Police benchmark in Q2, rising four places. The Merseyside and Lincolnshire forces make up the remainder of the top five.