Cast your mind back a couple of years to one of the biggest sustained, unified protests that councillors in this town had faced.

I am, of course, referring to the Save Warrington Libraries campaign that sprang up almost overnight after plans to close some of the town's busiest and most popular libraries were announced.

Such was the ferocity of the response from pro-library campaigners, the council was forced to do a swift about-face, promising to keep all the town's libraries open. And it also found a cool £1million down the back of the Town Hall sofa to do much-needed repairs to some of the ageing and dilapidated library buildings.

But there's a catch.

The libraries had to come up with 'robust business cases' to generate income and secure their futures.

First out of blocks was Stockton Heath. For a mere £170,000, the library is to be remodelled to generate space that can be rented out.

There are a couple of options for Birchwood Library involving moving it to the leisure and tennis centre.

Burtonwood Library now has a Post Office in it and the 'working group' at Culcheth Library has been developing ideas for a community hub library, knocking down the existing building and constructing a new one on the same site.

Lymm Library cracked on with its community and business hub and as for the central library, major works are planned in the long term but, for now, ‘quick and easy changes’ are being put in place.

Which brings us to poor Penketh Library. And what a sad tale this is.

The 50-year-old building is in a pretty bad state of repair and the council estimates it will cost the best part of £170,000 just to bring it up to scratch.

Despite there being £1m in the budget, the council had declined to spend any money on Penketh because the parish council had a 'masterplan' for the area which incorporated the library, the Honiton Way shops and parish council buildings.

Fast forward and the masterplan is dead in the water. No surprise there.

So can we get going with the library repairs then?

No, says the grandly-titled Lynton Green, WBC deputy chief executive, director of corporate services and chairman of the libraries partnership board because a 'mini masterplan' might be back on the cards.

"Hmm", says Derek Baker, chairman of Penketh Parish Council at September's meeting. "Not too sure about that, I'll have to ask Cllr David Keane." (I paraphrase here but you get my drift.)

And still Penketh Library continues to rot away.

By December, the mini masterplan was back on the parish council agenda with an update promised 'in the coming months'.

Which brings us neatly to this month.

According to Local Democracy Reporter Aran Dhillon, January's libraries board was told council officers are currently waiting to hear back from Cllr Baker and the parish council over its mini masterplan.

As Lynton Green said: “If the parish council don’t want to do anything then I guess the council needs to decide what we do with the library.”

And yet the very same Cllr Baker made a social media announcement last week stating it was the parish council that was waiting for the borough council to put its 'partnership proposals' forward.

It's like the Chuckle Brothers...to me, to you, only it's not funny.

What (or who) is the problem here, you may ask.

Well far be it from me to point fingers but maybe the man who is both a Warrington borough councillor and a Penketh parish councillor could hold the key.

Over to you Cllr David Keane. I know you've been busy lately with your other job as Police and Crime Commissioner what with disciplinary hearings and budget cuts etc but I think it's about time you told us exactly what your mini master plan is for Penketh.