There are thousands of repair cafes across the country and we are lucky to have have two of them here in North Herefordshire. I recently visited the Leominster Repair Cafe to learn more about their brilliant service. It’s a hive of activity, with at least eight repair volunteers armed with tools, skills, and enthusiasm.

Broken items brought in for repair included a hoover, a leaf blower, a pressure washer, a vintage toy, an electric piano, a battery charger, gardening shears and loppers. Volunteers worked to diagnose and fix each problem while the owners watched, chatted, or got a cuppa and a bacon butty from the on-site cafe.

It’s really inspiring: the Repair Cafe manages to fix 80% of the items that are brought in, stopping stuff from going to landfill, and saving people lots of money in the process.