A POLICE force that received a scathing performance report is making significant improvements, its boss said.

Earlier this year, Cleveland Police was one of five forces in England and Wales identified by inspectors as needing substantial improvements.

The force was judged poor in six out of 16 indicators in a Home Office Police Performance Monitoring report, published yesterday.

Chief Constable Sean Price said these were the baseline assessment figures in the previous report drawn up by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Police (HMI), looking back over three years.

The HMI has since re-visited Cleveland Police.

Mr Price said: "They have been reviewing all our scores. I think what we will be able to show is how we have improved in eight areas.

"There has been quite a dramatic improvement in performance and we expect the HMI to be upgrading our scores."

Helped by large drops in offences such as burglary, crime in the area is down by more than seven per cent.

Mr Price said: "It is not going to come out in the new grades until next year, but we believe the HMI have seen significant improvements."

His deputy, Ron Hogg, said: "They (The HMI) are very positive about improvements across a wide range of areas.

"They are not going to upgrade immediately as they want to be sure the improvements they are seeing are sustainable."

He said the force was concerned about a decline in detection rates, but while that remained an issue, figures were nevertheless rising.

In the report, Cleveland Police - a shire force -has been judged on the same basis as five metropolitan forces.

They all share the same crime problems, but the others receive more grants.

Cleveland Police Authority chairman Ted Cox called for a level playing field.

On all 16 performance indicators, Durham Police were judged fair to excellent. North Yorkshire were judged poor on tackling general crime and performance management.

Northumbria had six "excellent", eight "good" and two "fair" scores.