King’s award for Farnham Repair Café

Karen Neville

Camberley, Bagshot & Lightwater, Chobham, Community & Charity, Egham, Farnham, Godalming, Guildford, Haslemere, Old Woking, Round and About, Surrey, The Clandons

Farnham Repair Café has been honoured for the difference it is making to the community with the King’s Award for Voluntary Service

Founded in 2015 and gaining charity status in 2017, Farnham Repair Cafe has grown into a vital resource for people seeking to repair broken or faulty items, reducing waste and saving money.

It repairs household objects including electricals such as irons and kettles, mechanical items, furniture, laptops, bikes, clocks, clothing and textiles.

The café, which operates monthly at The Spire Church, has welcomed almost 6,000 product owners and successfully repaired more than 2,600 items. Repairing the products has diverted over seven tonnes of waste from landfill, avoided over 68 tonnes of carbon emissions and saved residents an estimated £220,000 in replacement costs.

Everything FRC does is done by volunteers, from repairs to running the welcome desk, to marketing, fundraising, strategy and everything in between. The current team of volunteers contributes an estimated 2,220 hours a year. The repairers have an amazing set of skills and relish the challenge of some of the trickier items that come in for repair. Between them they have decades of experience in electrical and mechanical engineering, software development, making clothes and furniture and much more.

Professor Martin Charter, Founder and Chair of FRC, thanked the volunteers’ unwavering commitment. “Our volunteers are the heart and soul of this initiative,” he said. “Their passion for repair not only helps individuals save money but also contributes to the larger goal of reducing CO2 emissions and combating the throwaway culture. We are thrilled to have received this recognition.”

Clive Handy, long-time volunteer said: “I joined FRC shortly after it started and after I had retired as a jet engineer. For me, the best part is when you’ve fixed a product and you feel the gratitude of the owner and the sense of achievement that something has been saved from landfill. The camaraderie with my ‘fellow fixers’, many of whom have become friends over the years, is also important to me.”

Satisfied ‘customer’ Mike Baker praised the “excellent service from FRC repairers” he has enjoyed on several occasions including a complicated hi-fi cassette player, adding: “Both me and my daughter were incredibly grateful to FRC textiles team who have brought back to life a teddy bear and Basil Brush.”

FRC also supports the wider repair movement, welcoming groups from other towns who are setting up their own cafés, to share how they operate as well as initiating a knowledge sharing network of over 20 local repair cafés called the Greater Surrey Repair Café Network. With support from UCA, to help demonstrate its impact, FRC developed its website – frc.cfsd.org.uk – and a repair carbon calculator that is used by more than 100 repair cafés worldwide.

Farnham Repair Café has been honoured for the difference it is making to the community with the King’s Award for Voluntary Service

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