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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Leeds City Council v. Woodhouse & Ors [2009] UKEAT 0521_08_2104 (21 April 2009) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2009/0521_08_2104.html Cite as: [2009] UKEAT 521_8_2104, [2009] UKEAT 0521_08_2104

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR DAVID JONES (of Counsel) Instructed by: Leeds City Council (Legal and Democratic Services) Civic Hall Leeds West Yorkshire LS1 1UR
``For the First Respondent	MR COLIN BOURNE (of Counsel) Instructed by: Messrs Morrish & Co Solicitors Oxford House Oxford Row Leeds West Yorkshire LS1 1UR
For the Second Respondent	No appearance or representation by or on behalf o the Second Respondent


 


SUMMARY

RACE DISCRIMINATION: Contract workers

Leeds contracted with WN for WN to provide housing services. WN contracted with Leeds for a department of Leeds to provide housing services back to WN so that WN could discharge its contractual duty to Leeds. WN employed Claimant. WN supplied Claimant to Leeds. Leeds employed Mr Chapman. Pursuant to section 7 Race Relations Act 1976, Claimant was a contract worker of WN to Leeds as principal. Leeds was liable for any discrimination by Mr Chapman. Leeds' application to strike out the claim was correctly dismissed by Employment Judge.


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE McMULLEN QC

1. This appeal is about the striking out of a claim of race discrimination. I will refer to the parties in the following way: the Claimant is Mr Woodhouse, the Respondents are Leeds City Council ("Leeds"), West North West Homes Leeds Ltd ("WN" also cited as WNWHLL) and Mr Chapman, a Leeds employee.

Introduction

2. It is an appeal by the Claimant in those proceedings against a judgment of Employment Judge Forrest at Leeds Employment Tribunal, registered with reasons on 12 September 2008. The Claimant was represented by different counsel and today has the advantage to be represented by Mr Colin Bourne. Leeds was represented by Mr David Jones, as was Mr Chapman.
3. The Claimant made a number of claims of race discrimination. The issue before the Employment Judge, as set up following a number of case management directions, was to determine an application by Leeds to strike out the claims against it and Mr Chapman on the ground that they had no reasonable prospect of success. Rule 18 of the Employment Tribunal Rules 2004 gives a narrow window for the striking out of a claim at the instance of a Respondent and, although it is couched in terms of reasonable prospects, the issue advanced by Mr Jones is one of jurisdiction, effectively that, on the material placed before the Tribunal, the Claimant has no right in to proceed on race discrimination claims against Leeds or Mr Chapman.
4. The essential issue was to determine, so far as is now relevant on appeal, whether the Claimant was a contract worker within section 7 of the Race Relations Act 1996. The Judge decided that he was.
5. Leeds and Mr Chapman appeal. Today Mr Jones represents only Leeds. Mr Chapman, technically, is a Respondent to the appeal, with WN, and neither resists the appeal. That is somewhat artificial for, in reality, the three Respondents below are dissatisfied with the Judgment.
6. Directions sending this appeal to a full hearing were given by Burton J and a cross-appeal by the Claimant was launched but is dismissed on his withdrawal of it today.

The legislation

7. The relevant provisions of the Race Relations Act 1976 are not in dispute. They are as follow:

"7(1) This section applies to any work for a person ("the principal") which is available for doing by individuals ("contract workers") who are not employed by the principal himself but by another person, who supplies them under a contract made with the principal.

(2) It is unlawful for the principal, in relation to work to which this section applies, to discriminate against a contract worker –

(d) by subjecting him to any other detriment.

(3A) It is unlawful for the principal, in relation to work to which this section applies, to subject a contract worker to harassment."

8. Section 78 defines employment:

"78(1) "Employment" means employment under a contract of service or apprenticeship or a contract personally to execute any work or labour, and related expressions shall be construed accordingly."

9. The Claimant is of African Caribbean origin and seeks to claim against Leeds and its employee, Mr Chapman. I extract the facts extensively from the Judgment because both Counsel assert that the facts are important in this case:

"6.1 Leeds City Council, the First Respondent, had a large stock of council houses. The Government was concerned that the management of council housing by local authorities was not as efficient as it might be and brought forward proposals in 2000 under which councils could, with the consent of the Secretary of State for Housing, create Arms Length Management Organisations ("ALMOs"), with a view to managing them more effectively. As a result, in February 2003, Leeds City Council created six separate ALMOs to manage their housing stock for them. In 2007, in a further reorganisation, the six ALMOs were merged into three. North West Homes Leeds merged with another ALMO to form the Second Respondent to this claim, West North West Homes Leeds Ltd.

6.2 ALMOs are companies limited by guarantee; the sole shareholder of West North West Homes Leeds Ltd ("WNWHLL") is Leeds City Council. WNWHLL is run by a Management Board composed of four Directors, who represent tenants, four Directors who are councillors of Leeds City Council, and four independent Directors.

6.3 Leeds City Council retains ownership of the housing stock, and has delegated its management to the various ALMOs. Staff who had previously carried out their duties as employees of Leeds City Council Housing Department were transferred under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 to the appropriate ALMO.

6.4 Mr Woodhouse was one of these staff. He had commenced employment for Leeds City Council on 21 December 1992, and in February 2003 was a Project Officer in the Housing Department. He then transferred to North West Homes Leeds Ltd, (and later, after the 2007 merger, to WNWHLL) and is currently a Principal Regeneration Officer.

6.5 WNWHLL, in common with other ALMOs, provide their services in managing the housing stock to Leeds City Council under a Management Agreement. It sets out in considerable detail the parties' responsibilities and powers. One of the Government's aims in establishing ALMOs was to take management of council housing out of local authority control. As their name suggests, ALMOs should therefore manage at arms length from the local authority; it is important to the Government scheme that ALMOs should be independent of the local authority. ALMOs are inspected by the Audit Commission, and independence is one of the factors they are assessed on. Guidance given from the office of the Deputy Prime Minister stresses the need for ALMOs to be independent. Clause 30 of the Management Agreement reflects this aspiration:

"30.1 Neither Leeds North West Homes nor its personnel shall in any circumstances hold itself or themselves out as being the servant or agent of the Council otherwise then in circumstances expressly permitted by the agreement."

6.6 Nevertheless, the relationship between Leeds City Council and WNWHLL is in practice extremely close. Apart from the formal questions of ownership and control, the business of WNWHLL is to manage the Council's housing stock. The Management Agreement requires WNWHLL to do this within the confines of a Business Plan, which has to be submitted annually to the Council and agreed by them. Moreover, the Management Agreement sets out an extensive Performance Management Framework within which WNWHLL has to operate. WNWHLL receives the vast majority of its finance from the Council; it can only raise funds externally if it can make out a business case to the satisfaction of the Council. WNWHLL only has one client for whom it provides services - the City Council.

6.7 In providing those services, managing the Council's housing stock, WNWHLL provide some of the services directly and contracts with other bodies to provide some. Specifically, it contracts with the City Council's Property Services Division to provide a range of maintenance services. The contract with Property Services is set out in a series of separate Service Level Agreements.

6.8 The majority of WNWHLL's staff were acquired from Leeds City Council under TUPE. They transferred with all their previous contractual entitlements. Indeed, it is a term of the Management Agreement that WNWHLL will honour all the Council's existing collective agreements with the recognised unions, save to the extent that these are subsequently varied by negotiations between WNWHLL and the unions. For many purposes, ALMO employees are treated on the same basis as employees of Leeds City Council staff. For example, they receive Team Talker, the information bulletin for Leeds City Council staff; Mr Woodhouse's personnel records are administered by Leeds City Council Personnel Department so that he receives his pay and his leave card from them; he can use the City Council's canteens as an employee; he is listed on the Leeds City Council website, which gives details of where to find him, giving his job title as Project Manager and his Department as Leeds ALMO, in the Division: Leeds North West Homes. Staff at WNWHLL have access to and use the Council's IT systems. WNWHLL has contracted with the City Council for the provision of IT and personnel services with the City Council. In a few areas WNWHLL has gone outside the City Council for services; for example, it has contracted with Peninsula Business Systems Ltd to provide personnel advice and tribunal representation.

6.9 Mr Chapman, the Third Respondent, is an employee of the Housing Department of Leeds City Council within its Property Services Division. Before the ALMOs were set up in 2003, he and Mr Woodhouse had had contact from time to time. One of Mr Woodhouse's duties for WNWHLL involved him from time to time in checking Mr Chapman's work. Mr Chapman was employed as a Project Officer/Clerk of Works. Under the Service Level Agreement between Leeds Property Services Division and WNWHLL, Mr Chapman was engaged on work maintaining properties for WNWHLL. Mr Woodhouse checked that the work was done by Property Services to the satisfaction of WNWHLL, and that it complied with the terms of the Service Level Agreement. One of the allegations in this case is that in the course of his work Mr Chapman made racially derogatory comments about Mr Woodhouse, and Mr Woodhouse's third complaint of discrimination relates to those comments.

6.10 One of the clauses in the Management Agreement relates to personnel:

19.1 Leeds North West Homes shall employ sufficient persons to ensure that the services are provided at all times and in all respects in accordance with the agreement.

19.2 Leeds North West Homes personnel employed in and about the provision of the services shall be properly sufficiently qualified, competent, skilled, honest and experienced, and shall at all times exercise care in the execution of their duties and Leeds North West Homes shall ensure that such persons are sufficiently instructed and supervised with regard to the provisions of the services."

10. With those findings, the Judge went on to examine the application of the law and, having concluded against the Claimant on issues relating to various forms of auxiliary liability under sections 32 and 33, matters which are not pursued, turned to the issue on appeal, which is the status of contract workers.
11. He came to the following conclusions:

"18. On first reading, Section 7 appears to apply most naturally to a situation where an employment agency contracts with workers and supplies them to a third party, the principal, to do work for the principal. Section 7 enables that worker to claim against the principal if the principal discriminates against them, within Section 7(2)(d) or 7(3A). That appears to be a very different situation to the facts of this case. In this case, the work to be done, managing council houses in the west and north-west of Leeds, was not available for doing by individuals. It was way beyond any individual's capacity to contract for. Ms Morrison counters that argument by saying that the work has, in practice, to be done by individuals, and that is precisely what the Management Agreement anticipated in clause 19. It stipulated that WNWHLL was obliged to employ sufficient employees, with appropriate qualifications and experience, to do the work required.

22. Mr Jones argues that the work which Mr Woodhouse was doing at the time he came into contact with Mr Chapman was not done for purposes of Leeds City Council, but was done solely for the purposes of WNWHLL: Mr Woodhouse was checking Mr Chapman's work to ensure that it was done to WNWHLL's satisfaction. He was not therefore "working for" Leeds City Council at the time, but rather for his own employer, WNWHLL. That seems to me to take too narrow an approach to the question of whose benefit, ultimately, the work was being done for. WNWHLL was created specifically to manage part of Leeds City Council's housing stock. That was the only work it did. Leeds City Council was its only client. All the work done by employees of WNWHLL, certainly at least of employees at Mr Woodhouse's level, (as opposed possibly to employees at a more senior or Director level), was done for Leeds City Council's benefit. WNWHLL was obliged under its contract with the Council to employ employees to carry out the work; and given the scale and scope of the extensive works involved, it is not surprising if some of the work involved quality control. That work was, ultimately, as much for the benefit of Leeds City Council as it was for the benefit of WNWHLL.

23 I find therefore that Mr Woodhouse was a contract worker within section 7 of the Race Relations Act 1976, and that Leeds City Council was the principal for the purposes of section 7. It follows that if Leeds City Council discriminated against Mr Woodhouse within section 7(2)(d) or 7(3A) of the Act, they are properly named as Respondent and can be made liable. If Leeds City Council have a potential liability under section 7 of the Race Relations Act 1976 to Mr Woodhouse, so does Mr Chapman. Mr Chapman is potentially liable under section 33(1) as someone who knowingly aided Leeds City Council to discriminate; or under section 33(2), as someone who is deemed to aid the doing of the act by his employer, in a situation where his employer, Leeds City Council, is liable for his actions under section 32. In this context, Leeds City Council have a liability under section 32 since under section 32(1) they are liable for anything done by a person in the course of his employment, whether or not it was done with the employer's knowledge or approval. They therefore incur liability for Mr Chapman's actions as an employee. On the narrow point of law on which this preliminary point had been argued, I cannot say the claims have no or little reasonable prospect of success and I therefore dismiss the application to strike out the claims against the First and Third Respondent. They must go forward to be argued on their merits."

He then went on to consider whether the Claimant was out of time and allowed the claims to be pursued, there being no jurisdictional bars by time limits or a failure to activate the dispute resolution machinery. Neither point is taken further.

The Respondents' case

12. On behalf of Leeds, it is accepted that the findings by the Judge at paragraph 22 cited above are all correct but they do not go far enough since the Judge did not examine carefully the subsequent stages necessary for an analysis of whether or not this case fell within the contours of section 7. The discussion by the Judge of the word "benefit" is only one aspect of the case and it is necessary to look at the words of section 7 itself which are "work for".
13. The section should not be read too widely for it will encompass, if unrestricted, all sorts of relationships between people governed by a contract. Engagingly, Mr Jones invokes the image of a milkman employed by a large corporation to deliver a pint of milk to each person in the village. It cannot be liable to the householders for race discrimination by the milkman,
14. The fact that Mr Chapman and the Claimant came together is entirely fortuitous as a result of the discharge by Leeds of its obligations through the ALMO, WN and thence through the Property Services Division. The analysis of section 7 should apply equally to the relationship with another contractor in this case, Peninsula, to whom WN discharges out certain personnel matters.
15. Mr Jones illustrated his argument with a diagram as follows:



16. He contends that the dotted line between Leeds and the Property Services Division is the one wrongly fastened upon by the Judge to illustrate the scope of section 7. The relationship under section 7 is governed by the service agreement and not by the management agreement. He contends that there were insufficient findings to bring the Claimant within section 7. That is not a criticism of the paucity of reasoning, a Meek v Birmingham City Council [1987] IRLR 250 CA challenge, but he says that, on the findings here, the Claimant cannot succeed.

The Claimant's case

17. The Claimant contends that this is a strike-out application. Evidence was heard and there is an appreciation of the evidence which cannot be disturbed absent an allegation of perversity. Mr Bourne contends that is essentially what this appeal is about; an allegation that, with these facts, the only conclusion was that the Claimant did not come within section 7.
18. The concentration by the Judge on the use of the word "benefit" is permitted in the light of the authorities but it imposes a gloss upon the statute which is, simply, to look in broad terms at the work done for another.

The legal principles

19. The legal principles appear to emerge from the following authorities.
20. An allegation of perversity has a high threshold to cross, see Yeboah v Crofton [2002] IRLR 634; an overwhelming case has to be made in order for it to succeed.

Contract workers

21. The treatment of section 7 has been the subject of argument in three important authorities. In Harrods v Remick and Others [1997] IRLR 583, the Court of Appeal considered three separate cases of persons employed by concessionaires who run businesses within Harrods. Harrods is a large department store in the centre of London and it provides sales outlets for certain independent contractors within its floor space. Black or ethnic minority employees sought to claim against Harrods under section 7 that they were the victims of discrimination. All three claims ended in the Employment Appeal Tribunal where Harrods' challenge to the findings were rejected.
22. Harrods appealed to the Court of Appeal, where the principal judgment was given by Sir Richard Scott, V-C, with whom Waite and Ward LJJ agreed. He described the facts:

"2 None of the three ladies has ever been or has applied to be an employee of Harrods. Their respective complaints arise out of the manner in which Harrods organises the sale of goods at its well-known Knightsbridge store and exercises its power to control the individuals who staff the selling departments in the store.

3 Put very shortly, the system in operation at Harrods' store is this. Harrods grants licences under which the licensee becomes responsible for a particular department at which its, the licensee's, goods will be sold. The licensee must provide the sales force at the department in question. The members of the sales force will be the licensee's employees, hired and remunerated by the licensee. Each member of the sales force must, however, be approved by Harrods and must observe Harrods' rules regarding dress, deportment and behaviour. He or she must wear a Harrods uniform and will be indistinguishable to the public eye from Harrods' employees. Harrods may withdraw its approval of any such individual at any time. The goods on sale at the department, although provided by the licensee, are sold by the licensee to Harrods immediately before their sale to the public.

4 The price at which this somewhat artificial sale by the licensee to Harrods takes place will be the price at which the goods are sold to the public less a percentage. The percentage will constitute Harrods' commission. These contractual arrangements have the result that the members of the sales force, each of whom will necessarily have been approved by Harrods, will be employees of the licensee but will be selling to the public goods that belong at the moment of sale to Harrods, not to the licensee."

The question posed by the court was this:

"18 … The issue whether s.7 applies to the respective cases of Mrs Seeley, Mrs Remick and Mrs Elmi against Harrods raises the following questions:

(1) Is the work done by individuals in the position of Mrs Seeley, Mrs Remick and Mrs Elmi at the Harrods departments 'work done for [Harrods]' for s.7 purposes?

(2) Are individuals such as Mrs Seeley, Mrs Remick and Mrs Elmi persons each of whom the respective employer 'supplies … under a contract made with [Harrods]'?"

In answer to that, the conclusion was as follows:

"It is plain that work is available to be done at Harrods by members of a licensee's 'staff'. The question, however, is whether, for s.7 purposes, the work available to be done by them is 'work for [Harrods]'. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that it was, and I have no doubt that they were right. The work would, of course, also be work for the licensee, the employer. But it is implicit in the section that the 'work' to which subsection (1) is referring will not only be work done for the employer, in that it is work done pursuant to the contract of employment, but will also be work done for the principal. Under Harrods' contractual arrangements with its licensees, the members of staff will be selling goods that at the moment of sale belong to Harrods. They will be receiving from customers the price for the goods. The gross sums they receive will be paid over to Harrods, leaving Harrods to account to the licensee after deducting its commission. All of this work of selling Harrods' goods and of receiving the purchase money for the goods is work required by Harrods, under its contractual arrangements with the licensee, to be done by staff employed by licensees. And the contractual arrangements entitle Harrods to impose rules and regulations governing the conduct of staff members in the course of carrying out this work. Against this background, the work done by the staff members can, in ordinary use of language, properly be described as 'work for' Harrods."

23. An appeal to policy was invoked by the court in order to strengthen the approach which had been taken. This was to cite the White Paper on Race Discrimination which was the forerunner of the Race Relations Act, and to note that none of the victims in this case would have a remedy. As the Vice-Chancellor pointed out, one of the Claimants had been found to be a victim and the two others may succeed and would be victims of injustice without redress. Thus, citing from Waite LJ in Jones v Tower Boot Co Ltd [1997] IRLR 168, consistently with the broad front on which it operates, the legalisation has traditionally been given a wide interpretation and Sir Richard Scott's conclusion is as follows:

"Accordingly, in approaching the construction of s.7(1) we should, in my judgment, give a construction to the statutory language that is not only consistent with the actual words used but also would achieve the statutory purpose of providing a remedy to victims of discrimination who would otherwise be without one."

24. That case was followed in sequence by O'Shea Construction Ltd v Bassi EAT 1366/97, a judgment of Lindsay J, President and members. Mr Bassi was an independent contractor of Pioneer who supplied concrete in a ready-mixed form to O'Shea and the question was whether or not he was entitled to the protection of section 7, as a contract worker. The EAT held that he was, upholding a judgment of the Employment Tribunal.
25. O'Shea came in for comment in the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal in Jones v Friends Provident Life Office [2004] IRLR 783 where a contract worker claimed the protection against sex discrimination of a provision in Northern Ireland legalisation ("Article 12"). The principal judgment was given by Carswell LCJ, who analysed O'Shea and had some reservations:

"16. I have some reservations about the correctness of the decision in Bassi's case, which seems to me to open the way to a wide variety of possible claims. If it is right, a delivery driver could in many instances claim under Article 12 against the consignee of the goods delivered by him or an employee of a subcontractor might claim likewise against the main contractor. I do not consider that the statutory provision can have been intended to extend so far, and am of the view that it must be restricted in some fashion if the respondent's contention is accepted.

17. The purpose of Article 12 is to ensure that persons who are employed to perform work for someone other than their nominal employers receive the protection of the legislation forbidding discrimination by employers. It is implicit in the philosophy underlying the provision that the principal be in a position to discriminate against the contract worker. The principal must therefore be in a position to influence or control the conditions under which the employee works. It is also inherent in the concept of supplying workers under a contract that it is contemplated by the employer and the principal that the former will provide the services of employees in the course of performance of the contract. It is in my view necessary for both these conditions to be fulfilled to bring a case within Article 12.

18. In the present case the respondent's employer entered into a contract with the principal, the appellant, to sell the principal's products. Mr Jones was not himself entitled to sell those products, being an AR but not a CR. The only way in which he could fulfil the contract was by employing a CR or CRs to make the sales, and accordingly it was contemplated that he would employ the respondent to do that work. The respondent was trained and authorised by the appellant, who had a large say in how she was to carry out the work, and the appellant was in a position to withdraw her authority to make the sales by ending her status as a CR. In these circumstances I consider that the conditions were satisfied and that the case was covered by Article 12.

19. It follows that the conclusion reached by the Tribunal was correct, but only because the respondent on the facts contained in the case stated satisfied the conditions which I have set out. I would therefore answer the question posed in the affirmative and dismiss the appeal."

26. That judgment was concurred in by Kerr J, as he then was, but the reservation was not shared by Nicholson LJ who gave a reasoned judgment and said this about O'Shea:

"26. In C J O'Shea Construction Ltd v Bassi [1998] ICR 1130 the EAT held that it was open to the industrial tribunal to hold that the applicant, Bassi, was contracted 'personally to execute any work or labour' within the meaning of s.78(1) of the 1976 Act and the fact that the contract between Pioneer and the applicant did not require Pioneer to give him any work at all did not preclude there being such a contract in respect of work he was given; that the question whether the applicant did any work for O'Shea was a matter of fact and degree depending on the surrounding circumstances. There is a helpful discussion of what is meant by 'employment under a contract personally to execute work' at pp. 1136, 1137 of the judgment.

Mr Bassi was subject to the instructions of O'Shea's employee when he arrived on site. This was the banksman who controlled access to the site by Mr Bassi, directed him where to discharge his load of concrete and in what quantity from time to time. He was also empowered to refuse to accept his load of concrete and to send him off the site if instructed to do so. He was in a position to make Mr Bassi's working conditions intolerable.

The EAT therefore upheld the decision of the industrial tribunal that Bassi was doing work for O'Shea as well as for Pioneer. I can find no error of law in this finding by the EAT and I do not have any reservation about the correctness of the decision.

27. If, as a result more people are able to complain of discrimination in relation to their work than had been earlier thought, I, like the EAT can 'bear with equanimity'."

Strike-out

27. To those authorities on contract workers, it is necessary to apply procedural authorities. This is a claim of race discrimination against Leeds and its employee, Mr Chapman. They both sought to have the claim struck out. In a pluralistic society, such claims should, except in the clearest case, proceed to trial; see the speech of Lord Steyn in Anyanwu v South Bank Students Union & Anor [1999] EWCA Civ 1032 . It must also be borne in mind that there is now a high threshold in strike-out claims in discrimination cases following, for example, the judgments of the Court of Appeal in Blockbuster Entertainment Ltd v James [2006] IRLR 630 and Abegaze v Shrewsbury College [2009] EWCA Civ 96.
28. It must also be borne in mind that, unlike the CPR on strike-out and summary judgment, evidence is exigible at an Employment Tribunal in a hearing under rule 18. Evidence was admitted in this case; very substantial documentary material was produced and live evidence was called from witnesses who were cross-examined. Thus a good deal of this case depends on the factual appreciation of the Judge in laying the groundwork for the application of the statute.

Discussion and conclusions

29. In my judgment, it is appropriate to look at the wording of section 7 which does not include the word "benefit" but, as Sir Richard Scott pointed out in Harrods, it is a useful approach to looking at the words. This is the approach taken by the Judge. He seems to have based his opinion upon an analysis of who was doing what for whom and for whose benefit. But I accept Mr Bourne's argument that these words are of very wide ambit; it is any work for a person. It will sometimes be of assistance to look at the question: for whose benefit is it?
30. I accept Mr Bourne's argument, too, in relation to the artificial position the Claimant found himself in. As the history shows, he was a long-serving employee of Leeds and so was Mr Chapman; they worked together. But Leeds decided to discharge its statutory obligations to its tenants by setting up the ALMO. WN decided, within its freedom to manage, to organise some of the work to be done by officers of Leeds, including Mr Chapman, through the service level agreement.
31. The relationship therefore was close. The findings by the Judge as to the peculiarity of this relationship are ones which stand. I was troubled by the illustration under a service agreement of an entirely independent organisation, Peninsula, because Mr Bourne accepts that, had Mr Chapman worked for Peninsula, the Claimant would not bring a claim against Peninsula. But the answer is found in the peculiar quadrangular arrangement illustrated by Mr Jones' diagram. It is not entirely fortuitous that Leeds ends up as the person ultimately receiving the services of the Claimant; this was a matter of strategy by Leeds to discharge its statutory obligations in the way which this structure shows.
32. The Judge made findings about the way in which the work was to be done and by whom. Those were findings were open to him. The Judge also had the claim form. Taking the claim form at face value as one of the matters going into the evidence of this case, Mr Chapman in the course of his work made derogatory comments about the Claimant.
33. The claim form indicates that the Claimant attended regular works meetings to deal with the provision of housing management at the Hawkswood Whole House Improvement Scheme on 13 October 2003. Then, at what I take it to be similar works meetings, although he did not attend on 13 December 2006 and 16 January 2007, the Claimant contends Mr Chapman made racist remarks about him. At that meeting, chaired by Mr Chapman, were officers of WN and of Leeds
34. The basis for the finding by the Judge as to the allegation at paragraph 6.9 of the claim can be found in the "pleading", although the Judge does not specifically dilate upon the pleading he concentrates on the facts.
35. In my judgment, the central issue for the Judge to decide was one of fact, examining the relationships between Leeds, WN and the Property Services Division. He examined the documentary material and heard evidence as to how the relationship was conducted; those are entirely matters for him. Given that Mr Jones accepts the bulk of the findings in paragraph 22, I reject his criticism of the Judge for having stopped short in his findings. There are sufficient findings here.
36. In this unique situation, the Claimant was a contract worker supplied by WN to Leeds as principal and, therefore, entitled to the protection of the anti discrimination legislation, as against Leeds and its employee, Mr Chapman. The Claimant was vindicated by the hearing of this case with evidence, albeit not at a full hearing. He defeated the challenge by Leeds, even in the attenuated circumstances of a PHR, and I see no error in the Judge's approach to the findings and of the application of the law. I accept, from the authorities I have cited, that a broad approach is to be taken and, as with other judges in those authorities (see para 27 of Jones), I view with equanimity the consequences of a broad interpretation.
37. The limits of section 7 are illustrated in this very case by Mr Bourne's acceptance that a claim would not be made against Peninsula. This is relevant to the particular facts arising out of the management of Leeds' housing stock. For those reasons, the Judge was right to conduct a fact-finding hearing and Mr Jones is right to assert that the facts are very important in this case. The appeal is dismissed.