Refusal to pay my invoice - what actions can I take?

[Oldhasbeen]

* I posted this on the "Employment Law" forum but I think it's a question for this forum instead *

I am a sole trader providing consultancy & training services to clients.

In July, I delivered a course to a public sector organisation client through a training company. At the end of the course, verbal feedback from the course attendees was good, although I did not see the formal feedback to the training company, which is made though a web-based system.

Two weeks later, the training company informed be that there had been a complaint against me, relating to behaviour during the course, so they would not process by invoice,pending investigation.

After four further weeks I received received a final decision from the training company, i.e. that they are clients is refusing to pay my invoice. I am very unhappy about this:
- None of the attendees of the course complained to me during the day I was there
- I've not seen the original complaint, nor do I know who made it and when; I've only received a list of bullet points summarising the complaint, each one of which I have responded to
- Most parts of the complaint were vague in the extreme e.g. "bad language"
- I have not been given any of the wider feedback on the course (i.e. the online course ratings feedback)
- The training company has not mentioned anything about refunding the end client (i.e. the public sector organisation) any monies. I suspect they have pocked my fee.
- The training company took nearly a month to investigate the complaint, when it's own SLA says it should have done this in 48 hours
- I have not received ANY justification for the training company's decision - I would expect, at least, a point-by point response to my own rebuttal of the complaint's main points.

At he very least I'd like to be given the full feedback from all course attendees, a detailed explanation of the training company's decision, and whether the training company had refunded any money to the end client.

Could anyone advise me?

Thanks"

[efpom]

Your option seems to me to be very simple. You sue. Before doing so, you issue a letter before claim, setting out its defence and picking out the holes in it, setting it to its proof that it has not invoiced the end user for its services that were provided to it by you and requesting full disclosure of all documents that it relies on. see cpr 31.16

That is predicated on what your contract with it says. If there is a clause to the effect that you don't get paid until it gets paid then it becomes slightly more complicated.

Once the letter before claim is issued, you can send a copy of that to the end user, and request that it confirm that it was not in receipt of any invoice.

See the last sentence in the link -

https://www.brabners.com/blogs/dispu...rty-disclosure

[Oldhasbeen]

Thank you!