Equality and Human Rights Commission

Equality law applies to people or organisations that provide goods, facilities or services to the public or a section of the public, or carry out public functions. We explain what these words mean in the Glossary.

It doesn’t matter if services or public functions are free or if you pay for them.  

It doesn’t matter if the local council or government department or other public body is working with other organisations to provide its services or carry out its public functions, or if it is paying a business or voluntary or community sector organisations or charities to provide the services or carry out the public functions.

The size of the organisation does not matter either.

Equality law affects everyone who is providing a service or carrying out a function, including people who are running an organisation or who might do something on its behalf, such as its staff.

But there are sometimes differences in how equality law applies to different people and organisations.

Some activities of local councils, government departments and other types of public body are what the law calls services. Some are what the law calls public functions.

For example:

• The sort of day-to-day contact you are most likely to have with people who work for local councils will count as a service, for example, staff carrying out refuse collection or delivering meals on wheels. So will situations where a public body provides you with information.
• Services also include what other people do, such as receptionists, security staff and people who work behind the scenes planning how services shouldbe delivered.
• Public functions include other actions of local councils, government departments and other types of public body, like collecting taxes, giving or refusing planning permission, making immigration decisions about whether to grant someone leave to enter or remain in the UK, inspecting or regulating other organisations, and making decisions about priorities for services, such as whether money will be spent in a particular area.

It does not usually matter whether what is being done is a service or a public function. This is because, in general, equality law applies in a very similar way to services and to public functions.

In this guide:

• ‘Service provider’ is used to mean any person or organisation who is providing local council or government or other public services to members of the public or carrying out public functions, whether what they are doing counts as a service or as a public function.
• ‘Service user’ is used to mean you, or anyone else who is using the services of a local council or government or other public services or who is on the receiving end of a public function. It includes someone who wants to use services (for example, someone who is stopped or put off using a service by unlawful discrimination).
• ‘Service’ includes goods and facilities as well as services, and public functions.
   

Public sector organisations and others who deliver services for them or carry out public functions on their behalf may have to have what the law calls ‘due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity’ between people who have a particular protected characteristic and people who don’t. These are known as the public sector equality duties, and they apply to the protected characteristics of race, disability and sex.

When you are receiving services from (or are on the receiving end of public functions carried out by) a public sector organisation or others who deliver services for them or carry out public functions on their behalf, you may also have rights under the Human Rights Act 1998.

You can contact the Equality and Human Rights Commission to find out more about the public sector equality duties and the Human Rights Act.