First of all, I will say you should form your own opinions, browse the web, examine many sources and if need seek the advice of a insured qualified legal professional.
I do not consider the advice I have given you as bad advice. I have not gone into the ins and outs as I did not feel you would benefit from them.
If you do intend to involve lawyers I would like to point out your cost protection and more impoartly what you would be able to claim from the defendant.
The Small Claims Track
Claims that have a financial value of not more than £5,000 will be allocated to the small claims track. The court may adopt any method of proceeding at a hearing that it considers to be fair. Hearings are informal, the strict rules of evidence do not apply, the court need not take evidence on oath, it may limit cross -examination, and it must give reasons for its decision. No expert evidence may be given except with the court's permission and no solicitor's costs may be recovered.
The Fast Track
The fast track will be the normal track for any claim which does not come within the small claims track and which has a financial value of not more than £15,000, provided that the trial is likely to take no more than one day. When allocating a case to fast track, the court will give directions for the management of the case and set a time table for the steps to be taken between the giving of directions and the trial. When giving directions the court will also either fix the trial date or a period (not exceeding three weeks) within which the trial will take place. The standard period between the giving of directions and the trial will be not more than 30 weeks. The amount of costs recoverable in fast track cases is strictly limited. For example, the maximum basic trial costs that may be awarded is £750 for cases where the value of the claim exceeds £10,000, plus an additional £250 if the court considers it necessary for a party's legal representative to be present in addition to an advocate.
The Multi-Track
The multi-track is the normal track for all claims for which the small claims and fast track qualifications do not apply. The court will be responsible for the management of multi-track cases and must fix a trial date, or a period within which the trial is to take place, as soon as possible.
A JCT contract has no assumed standing in law; in my mind I can only see the possibility of any legal standing is if within your standard terms and conditions you had the clause.
If no other negotiated contact is in place it is considered that the work is carried out under the standard JCT minor works contract.
And I also minded to argue any such clause would be unlawful under the unfair contracts, as the JCT is an item that needs a remittance to get a copy and no comumser could be put to that expense.
As to confirming that you must first clarify that they are cancelling the contract, then you reply by saying you accept their cancellation. The fact you have stopped work is proof to this fact, and I can see no need to draw this fact out.
As to invoicing until you invoice no money is due.
As to the loss of profit on the remainder of the contract or invoicing for work not done, that is not my take on the situation.
There are many ways to look at the issue of charging for the undone work.
In this case I am using the breach of contract angle.
As they have breached contract you are entailed to recover all out of pocket costs and also loss of profit. I had taken the decision this was you only so all profit was your labour and I had taken that into account and also why I mentioned materials. I agree that you would need to break down the invoice. But that would be simply a case of working pro-rata what was worked and what was the cancellation charge. Although Keith is right in what he said, it also overly complicated for a small claims matter.
I understand where Keith is coming from, but this is not Balfour Beatty -V- Scot Power (one of the most comical breach of contract cases of modern times IMO Google it). But a small value claim (I presume).
It gets even more complicated then that when we start to consider you need to reasonably "mitigate your loss", ie you should find new work. So on that scale if you take on any new work the period you should have been there, that has profit has to be removed from what you can claim from the consumer, but you would also be able to recover the extra costs of placing adverts in your local paper to bring in that new work. But if you where to bring work forward by a few weeks, you still have a gap in your books and would not have mitigated any loss, but if you should find work for the period of the brought forward work you have then mitigated your loss and the above applies again.
It even more complicated than that, that is why these cases must stay in the small claims courts, as to the moment they go fast track or mutli track all they are fee generating exercises.
I feel my advice is sound, but I will concede that it goes straight for the jugular, and in hindsight a informal contact would probably be advisable. Although that said I would not, as they made their bed IMO (sorry L).
Also when choosing a lawyer if you do not have one in mind, ensure that it is on a free pre appointment basis, and only appoint if you feel happy with replies.
And above all else good luck.
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