Employment Law Advice

Topic: legal advice Tone: Formal/Professional Outline & Structure: It's not a letter but this system won;t let you input what you really want which is legal advice Extra notes: I took on a consultant recently for two months on a contract where she was providing services for our company. Over the two months her work was shoddy, bad grammar, spelling mistakes and most importantly she failed in her obligations to get back to a number of clients the consequence of which can be refunds for the company. She was working from her home address or going out to meet potential clients. So she could claim mileage and expenses. For a short period of 5 weeks when she started she was working with me during a training period at my office address. During this time she was late, some days would not even turn up. This was a training period on some aspects of the job which anyone would need to go through. The consultancy agreement which I attach for you (redacted) says she's a consultant. However, after I let her go she is claiming that she is a worker and she says she has been to seek legal advice and ACAS. She sent me an email claiming for a hospital appointment, several days holidays etc... the total is just over £1700.00 (seventeen hundred pounds). She states she had a regualr place of work - she didn't, she was working out and about or at home and spent a few weeks with me. She said she had to clock in and out - she didn't, we use TSheets which is an American record of time so we can see how much time is being spent on admin, sales etc... so we can see what we are spending too much time on. She's provided no record of time and was taken on to do 40 hours services a month with not holiday or sick pay as a consultant. On the 30 May I was feeding some information back to her where she failed in her obligations to contact several clients for several weeks. She started shouting at me. I left it and then sen her an email saying her behaviour was unacceptable and I am the client in this situation. She worked from home the next day cancelling client appointments and I could see no reason for her to do it. I revoked her access as I had enough of her and gave her two weeks notice as per the agreement. As the days rolled on I was seeing more and more things she'd failed to do and in the end we are looking at refunding some of these clients because of her failures. I believe she's breached the agreement by failing to provide even basic customer services - failing to update 7 clients as well as poor quality writing and spelling. I obviously don't want to pay her any more money but don't want a court battle for £1700. I know she won't have the funds to go to court and I believe she has to pay a fee to claim, is that right? Can someone assist with the legal advice on this and give me a quote for it. Thanks Tara