What are Most Similar Forces comparison groups?
Police forces operate in different environments and it is reasonable to expect that performance and costs will vary as these environments differ in complexity. Consequently, for many measures we compare a force with forces that are most similar to it (peer comparison) rather than comparing them to a national average. Decisions on which forces are the most similar to each other are made using a range of geographic, demographic, and socio-economic information. As a result, there are 42 ‘most similar groups’: one for each force (the exception is City of London for which it was not possible to identify any similar forces). So, just because Force B is in Force A’s most similar force group it doesn’t mean that Force A is also in Force B’s most similar group. The most similar force groupings cannot account for all differences between forces. The local context for forces in the same group may be quite different for some measures. Take local context into account when interpreting the comparison
