I'm confused. Have Warrington's libraries been saved or are they still at risk?

We should know by now but the sad truth is we don't.

We should have had the answer on Monday night after the council's executive board met to make the 'final' decision on modernising the service.

But what we got in reality was last-minute manoeuvring, contradictions, apportioning of blame and a little bit of self-congratulation.

But no clarity.

I had heard on the grapevine that not all of the exec board members were happy with the recommendations which had been painstakingly drawn up after a lot of consideration over many months by the library modernisation working group.

(Just a bit of context here. The working group was put in place after the original proposals by libraries operator LiveWire to close libraries apart from 'hubs' and replace them with Amazon-style 'lending lockers' brought a storm of protest and the formation of the incredibly successful Save Warrington Libraries group.) And it looks like my sources were correct.

Despite the fact the original recommendations were published on the council's website ahead of the meeting, they were changed at the last minute. Those changes are potentially significant but more on that later.

Let's just look at some of the contradictions and unanswered questions.

The exec board did agree to provide up to £1m for repairs and maintenance and a one-off boost to the book fund of an additional £150,000.

But Cllr Russ Bowden also pointed out the current council budget allowed for a £300,000 reduction in the management fee paid to LiveWire (in effect a £300,000 cut from the LiveWire budget) and that still had to be found from somewhere.

Sadly, we weren't given any indication where these cuts would fall or the savings made. Even if LiveWire brings in an extra £300k, it will just be standing still in financial terms.

Yet council leader Terry O'Neill proudly told the meeting the money had been found to save the town's libraries because of the clever financial investments the council had made.

That brings me to another contradiction.

Leisure and community lead councillor Tony Higgins was at great pains to point out that this was the first and only decision taken by the council on the future of libraries. Cllr Hitesh Patel seemed to have a different take, however, when he said LiveWire had come in for a lot of criticism over the past 18 months and but deserved something of an apology as it had been the council, including himself, who had signed off the original proposals.

No wonder I'm confused – did the exec board sign off on the proposals or not? I guess we'll never know.

There is one point made by several councillors and forcibly by leader Cllr O'Neill. The cuts are a direct response to Government austerity measures. That won't get an argument from me.

Anyway, back to Monday night's decision and the last-minute alteration to the proposal.

The exec board did agree to keep all libraries open subject to 'robust business cases'. And there's the elephant in the room.

What, exactly, constitutes a 'robust' case? How much money will the business cases have to bring in? Who decides if it is robust enough? (Somehow. I don't think the £93 a month Longbarn Residents Association is paying to use Padgate library constitutes 'robust'.) How long will each library be given to come up with a business case? And the key question: What happens if LiveWire doesn't manage to meet the robust business case criteria for some or all of its libraries?

Call me cynical if you like but here's my best guess.

The council has committed to doing up the library buildings and boosting the book fund for 2018-19 so I think libraries are safe until then at least.

The last council election was in May 2016 so the next one is due in May 2020.

Given the level of protectiveness shown by the people of Warrington towards their libraries, I can't see the council wanting to rock the boat before then which gives around two and a half years from now for the 'robust' business cases to be up and running and the libraries saved.

I hope I'm wrong but I have the feeling all we've done is bought some time until after the next election. Sadly, I think the round of applause for the exec board may have been a little premature.