DISABLED campaigner Frank Parkinson has quit public life over the closure of Tyldesley baths.

He has resigned from his post as chairman of the Access Committee after 14 years, the Ring and Ride Steering Group, the local Transport Group and the Highway's User Group.

Frank, of Birch Street, Tyldesley, said his resignation from the Access Committee is tinged with sadness and despair - sadness because he will not be at the November meeting, and despair because he feels let down by people in authority who he claims did not tell him the truth.

He said for 14 years he, his wife, Pat, and others had been working hard to have Tyldesley Baths adapted for the disabled and believed that the work was imminent. But others already knew the baths were to close.

Frank, who is blind, said he found out about the closure from the Leigh Journal and it was a week later, after he had offered his resignation, that he received an official letter from Stuart Holden at the Leisure Culture Trust.

He said: "Tyldesley Baths has had a swimming club for 128 years and all this will be destroyed by January, 2007.

"Local and national governments are stressing that exercise is the best way of keeping healthy and beating obesity, so on one hand, the Trust closes the baths, robbing locals of exercise. Then, on the other hand, it will be installing a PlayStation in Tyldesley Library, encouraging children to become couch potatoes.

"Over the years, under Wigan Council, Tyldesley has been systematically closed making it a ghost town. I am a man of principle and will not put my name to anything that I believe is wrong."

Frank urges anyone who wishes to complain about the baths closure to write to Stuart Hilton at Wigan Leisure Culture Trust, Trencherfield Mill Annexe, Wallgate, Wigan.

A council spokesman said: "Frank has worked tirelessly and successfully on behalf of the borough's disabled people for many years and we would like to place on record our appreciation.

"However, Frank is aware that Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust has never made any promises to him about the future of Tyldesley Baths and can have no evidence to the contrary. Like other interested parties, he was told simply that any progress on disability issues would have to wait until the Trust had completed its borough-wide review of leisure and cultural services.

"That review is now complete and has resulted in an exciting long term plan to bring the borough's leisure facilities into the 21st century. Sadly, this means leaving Tyldesley Baths behind from 2007."