Hard to beat: North Wales Police impressed the assessors

But Dyfed-Powys' chief constable criticised the report on his force's record on investigating crime, when it had the UK's best detection rate.

North Wales was rated excellent in four of 26 performance assessment categories, with no poor marks.

South Wales and Gwent received one excellent rating each, although South Wales also had one which was poor.

Overall detection rates and those for burglary, robbery and vehicle crime were excellent... it seems rather unfair therefore to see one of the highest performing forces in this area graded only as fair Dyfed-Powys chief constable Terry Grange

The Home Office published the assessments for 2004-05 for the 43 police forces in Wales and England.

Although they compare similar forces with each other, they do not provide an overall league table, and for the first time they also include assessments by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), which used to be published separately.

HOW WELSH FORCES FARE DYFED-POWYS excellent (0), good (13), fair (12), poor (1) GWENT: excellent (1), good (8), fair (17), poor (0) NORTH WALES: excellent (4), good (14), fair (8), poor (0) SOUTH WALES: excellent (1), good (14), fair (10), poor (1) Source: Home Office

They are graded from excellent to poor in areas ranging from customer service, tackling anti-social behaviour, road policing, leadership and investigating major crime.

The survey suggests that in most areas, the police forces of Wales are either getting better, or performing as well as last year.

The report said North Wales Police chief constable Richard Brunstrom had made community policing a top priority and praised its "impressive" performance, particularly around crime reduction and crime detection.

But Dyfed-Powys chief constable Terry Grange criticised the overall assessment on his force on crime investigations, when he said it was "high-performing, low cost."

Mr Grange said all forces had been assessed on "protective services" covering such areas as serious and organised crime and counter-terrorism.

But although such major crime was very unusual in Dyfed-Powys, inspectors found the force did not have the resources to deal with it.

GOOD AND BAD RESULTS DYFED-POWYS: poor - tackling "level two" criminality GWENT: excellent - dealing with volume crime, such as burglary and car theft NORTH WALES: excellent - reducing volume crime; volume crime investigation; resource management; science and information technology management SOUTH WALES: excellent - working with partners to cut crime; poor - science and technology management

Mr Grange said his force was one of the few to investigate all reported crime and had a higher detection rate than anyone else.

"The inspectorate themselves said that our overall detection rates and those for burglary, robbery and vehicle crime were excellent," he said.

"It seems rather unfair therefore to see one of the highest performing forces in the country in this area graded only as fair."