Faster connections are arriving
The Swansea Bay City Deal includes a £55 million Digital Infrastructure programme across the city region. Its three strands cover broadband for the hardest-to-reach rural areas, gigabit-capable connections for public-sector sites and economic growth zones, and wider 4G and 5G coverage.
If your broadband contract is up for renewal, check what’s now available at your address before you sign again. We’ll look at what you have, what you pay, and whether a backup connection is worth adding so that one fault on the line doesn’t stop the office. How we look after networks and Wi-Fi.
Small units still need proper networks
Swansea Council rents out around 75 small business units across six workshop sites, at Swansea Enterprise Park and elsewhere in the city, ranging from 46 to 232 square metres. Units like these often start with the internet provider’s router on a shelf and one Wi-Fi network shared by staff, visitors and the card machine.
That set-up causes trouble in a Cyber Essentials assessment, which expects default passwords to be changed and a properly configured firewall. We separate staff and guest Wi-Fi, change default passwords, configure the firewall properly and make sure the signal reaches the workshop floor as well as the office.
Selling to the public sector
Swansea has a large public sector. DVLA alone employs more than 6,000 people across its sites in Swansea and Birmingham, alongside the council, the university and the health board. Local firms that supply public bodies, or want to, often find Cyber Essentials on the supplier checklist, and UK central government buyers ask for it, or equivalent controls, on contracts that involve handling personal information.
We prepare businesses for Cyber Essentials from £295 + VAT, plus the IASME assessment fee, and every business we’ve prepared has passed. For our managed IT clients, most of the work is already done, because we keep every system to the standard.
Grants for growing firms
At the time of writing, Swansea Council’s Local Growth Fund offers pre-start grants of up to £25,000 for businesses not yet trading, with equipment among the typical costs, and growth grants of up to £50,000 at a 50% rate for businesses creating new jobs. New jobs mean new laptops, licences and accounts.
If you’re putting a bid together, we can give you a fixed written quote for the IT, so the figures in your application are real. The council sets the rules and decides what qualifies, so read its business funding page before you order anything.
