Heather Mills was criticised by a senior police officer yesterday for making a “disproportionate” number of 999 telephone calls.

In one day, officers received four emergency calls from Ms Mills, the estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney, but police who attended the scene were unable to find any ground for further action, it was claimed.

Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore, of Brighton and Hove Police, said the high number of calls could mean that any future complaints would not be taken seriously.

Mr Moore said: “We are having to spend a disproportionate amount of time on one particular person. We are duty-bound to respond, but clearly people who make lots of calls to the police run the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf.

“Officers who have attended previously to find there have been no grounds might not take any claims seriously, and that’s the danger we face.”

He added that while he did not feel the 39-year-old former model was wasting police time, the number of calls were as a result of the complicated personal situation she found herself in.

“We do have to respond to a disproportionately high volume of calls from Heather Mills McCartney because of the situations she finds herself in, and this is regrettable as it takes officers away from other policing matters. I hope my officers treat each call as seriously as they would do for anyone else contacting the police.”

On a number of occasions Ms Mills had contacted police claiming photographers were harassing her near her home in Hove, East Sussex. Last month it emerged that she had discussions with the force after receiving death threats.

In January her sister, Fiona Mills, made an internet appeal for an end to media “harassment” of her family, saying she was deeply concerned for the safety of Ms Mills and her daughter Beatrice.

Phil Hall, Ms Mills’s spokesman, said Sussex police had contacted her with details of death threats against her, which he said they were taking seriously. He said: “She is a single mum who has been very nervous about all the things that have happened. She has been followed late at night by people she does not know.

“The danger is that she will not call police in future and something serious will happen. What is she supposed to do?”

The criticism came on the day that Ms Mills announced that while she would always love Sir Paul. their bitter divorce meant that she had become a victim of vilification by the media.

Speaking at a campaign against some pig farming practices, she said she would never recover from the break up with the former Beatle. “I will never get over it. I will always love Paul,” she said.

She added that her divorce battle with one of the richest men in Britain was like “getting blood out of a stone”.

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