The case concerned the allocation of legal services commission contracts. Cornwall County Council was one of 17 providers of free legal advice with a contract from the Legal Services Commission, a body previously in charge of administering legal aid. It employed a dedicated team to provide this service. The Legal Services Commission used a call-routing system, under which calls from the public were routed to the next available adviser, who, in practice, could work for any one of the 17 service providers. In the re-tendering exercise, that number was cut to nine and the council lost its contract. 



The tribunal decided that even though there was clearly an organised grouping of council employees dedicated to providing the service before the transfer, it was impossible to match specific functions carried out by the council to specific functions carried out by any of the new contractors. The tribunal took into account the random allocation of calls between the 17 service providers and the fact that it was impossible to make a direct match between the percentage of service provided and the allocation of hours pre- and post-transfer, as a result of the cut in the number of providers. The tribunal suggested that if the activities had been defined alphabetically, by location, or in some other way, and then allocated to the new providers according to that definition, a different conclusion might have been reached.



Thomas-James v Cornwall County Council, unreported ET1701021-22