LAST Month, the Lymm Repair Café, supported by Lymm Parish Council, the Coffee House, and Warrington Borough Council, welcomed its 1,000th visitor.
Incredible when you consider that this community based project has been operating only one morning a month for just over a year with no formal source of funding.
Residents simply turn up on the day with their household items and the volunteers work on repairing these for a “pay what you can” donation whilst residents can purchase a low priced a selection of homemade cakes made by volunteers, hot drinks and soup as well as coffee kindly donated by The Coffee House.
Over 30 volunteers across the borough give their time and experience to the Repair Café –over 800 items have been presented to the team, 75% of these have been repaired. The team has sharpened over 220 tools, repaired over 220 electrical items, sewed 175 items of clothing, fixed 77 items of jewellery and repaired over 50 bikes. Items as varied as antique dolls, hoovers, childrens’ toys, guitars, 70s lamps and even an accordion are amongst the many things which have been repaired.
Where items are not repaired, this is generally because a part is needed. Volunteers help residents locate the part online, which can then be purchased and brought back the following month to be fitted.
The Repair Café also welcomes residents who have nothing to repair but like to come and chat with others on the day.
Ben Tolhurst, a local resident who helps to run the Repair Café said;
“This is a great example of a multi-stakeholder community project providing a much needed local service for residents of Lymm and surrounding areas – and we have lots of ideas for how to build on this project.
In this time of the cost of living crisis, the opportunity for household items to be repaired for free or low cost is a vital public service and it is also good for the environment as most items would probably have ended up in land fill if they were not repaired. And all of this is delivered in a culture and ethos which promotes positive mental health and community resilience.”
The Lymm repair café runs on the second Saturday of every month 10am-1pm at Lymm Village Hall, Pepper Street, Lymm, Cheshire WA13 0JB. For more information see Facebook – repaircafelymm or contact the team at repaircafelymm@icloud.com
