Scubaism

Emergency services are on alert after a woman who has sparked 56 sea rescues costing £1 million moved to Sussex - next to a reservoir.

Amy Dalla Mura is banned from going within 50m of the sea in Britain after jumping off piers, jetties and cliffs. She has been slapped with an Asbo for playing a “game of cat-and-mouse” with police and “causing harassment, alarm and distress”.

Now she has moved from Wales to Ardingly, near Haywards Heath, and there are fears she will head for the reservoir or the coast.

Her move east comes days after she breached a court order by causing four alerts in five days in June. A judge has banned her from going near Ardingly Reservoir. She is not allowed to move to her mother’s house in Kingsway, Hove, because it is too near the sea, so she is staying with her sister.

Since 2001 she has made scores of attempts to apparently drown herself in the Irish Sea at Aberystwyth. Emergency services believe painful hip and back problems have driven her to attempt to drown herself as a “cry for help”.

Ms Dalla Mura told The Argus the number of rescues had been exaggerated by the authorities. She said: “It is a very complicated and bitter story. I had a very active and special life which has, over the last few years, been taken away from me.”

The 45-year-old former professional golfer is on first-name terms with lifeboat crews, police, coastguards and RAF air-sea rescue helicopter crews in Wales. One PC won a bravery award in 2003 after swimming 300m out to sea to save her.