Older buildings
Wi-Fi that copes with Victorian walls
The Vale of Glamorgan Council describes the Penarth Conservation Area as the largest in the county and one of the most varied. It takes in part of the town centre, streets of Victorian villas and terraces, the parks, the seafront and the pier.
Those buildings make lovely offices and awkward networks. Thick solid walls, several floors and rooms never designed to share one router mean a single box in the hallway rarely reaches everyone. We look at the building first, put access points where people actually sit, and link them with cable wherever we can, so the signal isn’t fighting its way through brick.
If you rent, we agree any cabling with your landlord before work starts. New equipment and installation are quoted up front. Our network and Wi-Fi support page explains how we approach it.
Hybrid working
When the office is a spare room
Working from home is common in the Vale. In the 2021 Census, 34.0% of employed Vale of Glamorgan residents said they worked mainly at or from home, against 25.6% across Wales. The census was taken during the pandemic, so treat the exact figure with care, but it shows how many people here had set themselves up to work from home.
For your IT, that makes the laptop on the kitchen table part of your business. It’s also in scope for Cyber Essentials, which covers any device used to reach your organisation’s data. We keep every laptop updated and protected wherever it is, enforce multi-factor authentication on every account, and keep files in Microsoft 365 rather than on one person’s desktop. Our page on Microsoft 365 security explains the settings we put in place.
Home broadband in the Vale is generally good: Ofcom’s January 2026 figures show full fibre available to 87.1% of premises in the county. When someone’s connection lets them down, we help work out whether the problem is the line, the router or the laptop.
