Detectives hunting for missing eight-year-old Sarah Payne were last night sifting through thousands of possible sightings from across the country.

Police have received a massive response from the public since releasing a computer-generated e-fit picture of a man they want to question.

The picture was composed following the sighting of a young girl fitting Sarah's description with a man at the Granada Services, Knutsford, on the M6 in Cheshire.

The child, who said her name was Sarah, was seen at 5am on Sunday, July 2, about nine hours after Sarah Payne vanished from a lane near East Preston, West Sussex.

Hopes were raised earlier yesterday when police revealed there had been another possible sighting in Scotland, at services on the A80 near Cumbernauld. But after studying CCTV camera footage they confirmed it was not Sarah.

In another development, a man in his thirties was arrested in the Wirral, Liverpool, in connection with the inquiry but police said it was "not a significant development" and he was later released without charge.

Sussex Police's Assistant Chief Constable Nigel Yeo said the inquiry team had handled 1,500 calls from the public in just two hours yesterday morning.

A further 1,700 calls flooded in to the incident room at Littlehampton police station throughout the afternoon. In total, police have dealt with about 12,000 calls from the public. Up to 300 officers from the force are involved in the nationwide inquiry.

Mr Yeo praised the public for the huge response to the case, adding: "I have never seen a public response like it."

He also insisted the Knutsford sighting was still a major lead in the inquiry. "At the moment the Knutsford incident remains of the sightings the best we have got, the most significant," he said.

Mr Yeo said the fact that the man spotted with the young girl in the blue dress had not come forward led police to "draw inferences".

The youngster's favourite band Steps made an appeal to her during an early morning broadcast.