I think your first statement is the one that answers my problem - "you cannot listen on a broadcast UDP socket".
A "central tracking server" is certainly one way to go but I was trying to avoid a single point of failure. I was not really bothered which sub-server handled the sub-requests and was even prepared to queue them to another server if the first had gone away - the unreliable udp part was only to ferret out possible sub-servers and after that I'd been using reliable tcpip and connect to guarantee the jobs were handed out and dealt with.
Anyway the key point I think you are saying is "you cannot listen on a Broadcast UDP socket" - this is the overriding fault in the existing system regardless of possible better solutions.
Thnaks for the pointers.