Hampshire · Surrey · Berkshire
IT consultancy in Fleet, Hampshire.
Twenty years in infrastructure, eight of them keeping the trading platforms of three investment banks running. Most recently as Vice President at Morgan Stanley.
The same discipline, scaled to a business of twenty people. The budget changes; the standard does not.
Where you might be starting
Four reasons people call
Nobody goes looking for an IT consultant on a quiet Tuesday. It is almost always one of these.
- The person who knew how it worked has left An engineer, or a supplier whose contract ended. Nothing is documented, nobody is sure what half of it does, and everyone is quietly hoping nothing breaks before someone works it out.
- Something broke and it hurt An outage that cost a day of trading, or a restore that turned out not to work. The question afterwards is always the same: what else is waiting to do that?
- A client or insurer is asking for proof A security questionnaire, a Cyber Essentials requirement in a contract, or an insurance renewal that now wants evidence the controls exist rather than a tick in a box.
- You are moving, or growing past the original setup A new office, or a consumer router and a box under a desk that have quietly become a business risk.
Engagements
Fixed scope, fixed price, stated up front
Day rates make sense for open-ended work. For most of what a small business needs, a defined piece of work at a known price is easier to approve and easier to judge.
IT health check — £1,950
Two days on site, one day writing it up. You get an inventory of what you actually have, a network diagram, risks ranked by what they would cost you, and a twelve-month plan with indicative figures. Delivered within ten working days.
This is the usual starting point. It is also the one that tends to find things nobody knew about.
The full checklist is published — read it, run it yourself, and call us about the parts that worry you.
Inherited estate takeover — £4,500–£7,500
For when the person who built it has gone. Five to eight days depending on size: full documentation, credentials moved into managed storage, a list of everything unsupported or unpatched, and a prioritised plan.
Anything working well stays. There is no value in replacing a sound system to make a point.
Cyber Essentials readiness — from £1,250
Two days of assessment against the five controls, and a gap report you can act on. Readiness alone is £1,250; readiness, remediation and support through certification together run £3,500–£6,000 depending on what the assessment finds.
Most failures are the same two things: unsupported operating systems, and administrative accounts used for everyday work.
Fractional IT — £1,400–£2,600 a month
Two days a month at £1,400, four at £2,600. Monitoring and response, security reviews, patching discipline, planning, an escalation route when something breaks, and a quarterly review written for the board rather than for engineers.
An in-house IT manager costs £45,000–£60,000 plus overheads. This is the senior half of that role, without the recruitment or the single point of failure.
Coverage
On site, not just on a call
Based in Fleet. Everything below is close enough that being there in person is routine rather than an event.
| Where | Distance | Typical drive |
|---|---|---|
| Fleet, Church Crookham, Crookham Village | 1–2 miles | Under 10 minutes |
| Farnborough, Aldershot, Farnham | 4–6 miles | 15–25 minutes |
| Camberley, Yateley, Hook, Hartley Wintney | 5–10 miles | 15–25 minutes |
| Basingstoke, Bracknell, Alton | 10–12 miles | 25–40 minutes |
| Guildford, Woking, Reading | 12–15 miles | 25–40 minutes |
| London | 37 miles | About an hour by train |
Further afield is not a problem for project work — travel is quoted separately and agreed before anything starts.
Who this suits
Small and mid-sized businesses that depend on IT working
Five people or two hundred. Professional services, manufacturing, logistics, and the aerospace and defence supply chain around Farnborough and Aldershot — where Cyber Essentials is a condition of bidding rather than a nice-to-have.
We also work alongside existing IT providers. A managed service handling day-to-day support is not a competitor; it is often the reason we are brought in for a specific piece of engineering — a network redesign, a migration, a security baseline — and we document what we build so they can run it afterwards.
Common questions
What people ask first
Do you cover my area?
If you are in Hampshire, Surrey or Berkshire, almost certainly. Fleet sits between the M3 and the A31, so Farnborough, Camberley, Basingstoke, Guildford, Woking and Reading are all inside forty minutes. London is an hour by train and we work there regularly.
We already have an IT company. Is this a conflict?
No, and it is a large part of what we do. Managed service providers handle support, licensing and the helpdesk; they are usually not set up for infrastructure design, cloud architecture, automation or security engineering. We do that work and hand it over documented, so your existing provider can support it.
What does the health check actually look at?
Capacity and monitoring first, because an unmonitored disk filling up is still one of the most common causes of a serious outage. Then backups and whether a restore has ever been tested, identity and administrative access, patching and end-of-life systems, network segmentation, documentation, and how much of the estate depends on one person being available.
Why is the price fixed rather than a day rate?
Because an open-ended meter is hard to approve and harder to trust. The scope is defined, the deliverable is defined, and the number is agreed before anything starts. If the work turns out to be larger than the scope, we say so and re-quote rather than quietly running on.
Can you help us pass Cyber Essentials?
We assess you against the five controls, tell you plainly what would fail today, and fix it. Certification itself is issued by an IASME-accredited certification body, not by us — we prepare you for it and support you through the submission.
Are you a one-person company?
Yes, and it is deliberate. You get the engineer who did the work in the bank, not an account manager and a junior. For larger pieces we bring in trusted specialists and say so up front. If a job needs a bigger team than that, we will tell you rather than stretch to fit it.
Start with a conversation, not a commitment
Tell us what is worrying you. If it is something we are the right people for, we will say so and quote it. If it is not, we will say that too.