LORNA King and her husband, Russell, both in their mid-sixties, are desperate to retire. Neither of them is well. Mrs King is not long out of hospital with pneumonia. Russell has had two strokes.

And in such circumstances, who would deny their desire to sell up their two adjoining shops and flats above them in Great Harwood and get on with their lives?

Step up, Hyndburn Council, wielding a petty-minded policy that traps them to the place -- all because they aren't allowed to rebuild a wall they knocked down 24 years ago.

The Kings had it removed to make the two flats over the shops into one. All the same, they kept a front door and back door for each property and continue to get separate gas and electricity bills for them.

Now, in order to sell them to a builder they had lined up, they want to put the wall back. But councillors turned down their application -- by the casting vote of the planning committee's chairman.

Why? It would go against the council's policy of rejecting new housing applications as there is a backlog of ones already approved and over-supply of houses in the borough.

What there is evidently a shortage of at Hyndburn Council is common sense and compassion.

After all, these aren't new properties. They have been there for years. And if the flats are classed as one why -- with the restoration of a wall that was there before anyway -- cannot they now become two, when that's what they originally were?

And above all, why should such pettifogging nit-picking stand in the way on anyone's heath and right to get on with their lives as they please?

Oh, but it's the r-u-u-u-les, isn't it? Is there no-one at Hyndburn with the gumption and humanity to realise that, in this case, the rules are silly and cruel and should be waived forthwith?