Police chiefs have urged the public to stop exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to settle vendettas, after forces reported that many people have been “lockdown shaming” as part of ongoing domestic disputes.

As forces have been inundated with thousands of daily allegations of people breaching coronavirus restrictions, the police’s professional standards body has intervened to ask the public to curb “deliberate false reporting” and spreading misinformation to punish nuisance neighbours or settle long-running feuds.

“Some are ongoing neighbour disputes and nothing to do with coronavirus. People have had pops at each other and are using this as an opportunity to try to cause more grief and get officers around to their address,” said a senior police source, who asked for their force not to be named.

This development has prompted the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) to urge the public to “exercise common sense and only report well-meaning concerns”. A statement from the NPCC, which is coordinating the policing response to the pandemic, said: “This will help to protect police resources during these demanding times and ensure they are only called upon to deal with legitimate issues.”

The police’s professional standards body, the College of Policing, which along with the NPCC drew up last week’s updated guidance on how to enforce the lockdown, echoed the concerns. “Deliberate false reporting, obstruction or misinformation at a time of crisis helps nobody, and risks public safety. In those cases police will use their discretion in determining whether enforcement action is appropriate,” it said.

The statement came as West Midlands police, the second largest force in England and Wales, revealed it had been receiving as many as 1,000 Covid-19-related calls a day – up to half of its daily total – before launching an online form for reporting suspected breaches.

The majority of reports, said the force, were for low-level incidents, such as neighbours reporting someone they had seen walking the dog twice in a day. “The ones that are reporting really, really serious breaches are probably quite a small number,” said a West Midlands police spokesperson.

Police have praised the vast majority of the public for adhering to the government’s rules, which were clarified on Thursday with a list of reasonable excuses for Britons to leave their homes during the lockdown.

But many have also enthusiastically embraced “corona shaming”. In Norfolk, for instance, police received 1,261 calls from the public reporting breaches over the Easter bank holiday weekend. In response, Norfolk police issued 536 warnings, mainly to individuals gathered in groups in public or inside homes.

The ones that are reporting really, really serious breaches are probably quite a small number West Midlands police

The Metropolitan police is processing several hundred fines against Londoners. The force says that, overall, “fewer people are making non-emergency calls” but will not disclose how many are Covid-19 related.

In Manchester, police received more than 1,000 reports of people holding parties or barbecues over the Easter bank holiday, and even claims that more than 50 pubs were serving customers. Many calls, police said, stemmed from over-zealousness rather than attempts to deliberately misinform officers. Often, key workers, who are allowed to travel for work purposes, were mistakenly reported.

“People have reported key workers, phoning us to say they are in and out of the car several times a day. Genuine calls, made with good intent, but false,” said a police source. One force said officers had even been called to a property where a child had died from non-Covid causes because five people had gathered there.

Some members of the public told the Observer that they had repeatedly called police about neighbours who appeared to be breaking lockdown rules or, in one instance, had “different lovers round”.

Former paramedic Paul Goodwin, who earlier this month set up the Facebook group Covidiots UK for a few friends “to highlight some of the unbelievable behaviour of people” now has nearly 200 members.

On the Mumsnet website, one user was considering naming and shaming her husband in the village Facebook group for “going out at least once a day” in his sports car.

Police have also been accused of being overly keen. Last week, The chief constable of Northamptonshire police, Nick Adderley, backtracked after threatening that his officers would start to look in people’s shopping trolleys and baskets for non-essential items if they continued to flout the rules.

The policing approach is to engage with people, explain the rules, encourage them to go home and use enforcement as a last resort. So far more than 3,200 fines have been issued by police in England for alleged breaches.

• The article was amended on 19 April 2020. An earlier version incorrectly said that the number of reports received daily by West Midlands police was as many as 2,000; that should have been 1,000. The force is the second largest in England and Wales, not the UK as originally stated.