The Complaints Department

Desk 4 is not on the floor plan.

This is not a conspiracy. It is that the floor plan was drawn in 1998 and Desk 4 was created in 2003, and the department that would update the floor plan was dissolved in 2011, and the form for requesting an update to the floor plan goes to Desk 4.

Priya has worked Desk 4 for six years.

Desks 1 to 3 handle complaints about the things the council administers: bins, roads, planning, the swimming pool. Desk 4 handles the others.

A partial list of others, from Tuesday:

– The seagulls (nine)
– The weather (three)
– A neighbour's wind chimes (one, extremely detailed, laminated)
– The passage of time (one)
– A cat (four separate complaints, all about the same cat, all from people who love it)

The official position is that Desk 4 exists to redirect enquiries to the appropriate authority. Priya has read the official position. It is framed on the wall behind her, at an angle nobody has ever corrected.

The actual position is that there is no appropriate authority for the seagulls, and the man who comes in about the seagulls needs somewhere to go on a Tuesday.

His name is Bernard. He has been coming for four years. The complaint has never varied by more than a sentence.

"They've got worse," Bernard says.

"Have they."

"Organised. That's what people don't understand. Not just noisy — organised."

Priya writes this down. She has a form. The form has a box marked NATURE OF COMPLAINT and a box marked ACTION TAKEN and, at the bottom, an enormous box marked NOTES that whoever designed the form clearly intended for addresses.

Priya uses the notes box.

B. mentioned his wife's birthday would have been Thursday. Did not want to talk about it. Wanted to talk about seagulls. We talked about seagulls.

Four years of forms. She has them in a drawer. Nobody has ever asked to see them, and there is no retention policy, because the retention policy is administered by a department that no longer exists and whose functions transferred, in 2011, to Desk 4.

In March the council did an efficiency review.

The consultant was about thirty and extremely polite and asked Priya to describe the value Desk 4 delivered to the authority. Priya described it. The consultant wrote low measurable output on his tablet, at an angle, not quite far enough away.

The recommendation was closure. Redirect to the website. Estimated saving: one point one full-time equivalents.

The recommendation went to committee.

Here is what happened at committee, as reported by Priya's friend Dev, who takes the minutes and has the best job in local government.

The consultant presented. It was, Dev said, a good presentation. Councillor Ahmed asked a question about the website. The consultant answered it well. Closure looked, Dev said, entirely certain.

Then Councillor Ahmed said: "Can I ask — Desk 4. Is that the one with the woman who does the seagulls?"

And the room went quiet in a particular way.

And the chair said, "My mother went to Desk 4 for a year after Dad died. She said she was going about the hedge."

And someone at the back said, "The hedge?"

And the chair said, "There isn't a hedge."

Desk 4 remains open.

It is still not on the floor plan. The efficiency report is filed in the drawer with Bernard's forms, which Priya considers the correct place for it.

Bernard came in on Tuesday. The seagulls have got worse. Organised, apparently.

Priya wrote it all down.