RULES may be rules, but do they have to be so inflexible that common sense is buried beneath them?

Yet, such stands to be the outcome in the case of an East Lancashire couple who have spent a dozen years and thousands of pounds creating a delightful garden -- covering a considerable one and a half acres -- only to be now told to they must dig it.

This is because the council says the garden at the Clayton-le-Moors home of Frank and Rosemary Jackson amounts to an unauthorised development of green belt land.

But even the chairman of the town hall committee that has served the Jacksons with an enforcement notice telling them it must be returned to its "natural state" -- in other words, an uncultivated field -- admits that, by any standards, the garden is an attractive one and that it is extremely unfortunate that it will have to be removed.

But what are the standards that insist on the destruction of a pleasant and appealing aspect of the local landscape and the ruination of years of hard work and expense? Certainly, they seem lack the ability to differentiate between the craziness of destroying something nice for the sake of the rules and the council having the pluck to waive the rules when they are so harsh and absurd.

Indeed, the green belt needs to be protected. But is it seriously or detrimentally violated by shrubs, trees, herbaceous borders and the vegetable patch that Mr and Mrs Jackson have so carefully cultivated for so long? And are the regulations so seriously transgressed when the garden that councillors accept is attractive contrasts with the massive industrial estate that the town hall has given consent to within the very same vista?

It is, surely, questions such as these that planning officials must ask before they employ the ruthlessness of the "It's the rules" mantra. There should be scope for common sense in the enforcement of the rules, not blind enforcement of the rules for their own sake -- and certainly when the upshot promises to be needless, official vandalism.