The town council has backed the creation of a Stortford Repair Café with a £600 grant to cover set-up costs.
Members agreed the Brazier Trust should support the new venture at the Emmaus Centre at St James the Great Church, Thorley, with funding for the first three sessions.
The council’s Liberal Democrat leader, Cllr Miriam Swainston, said: “I’m really excited about this project. Hopefully, it will help reduce the amount we send to landfill.”
The Stortford Repair Caféwill be a pop-up where residents can bring broken household items for repair by experienced volunteers, run under the auspices of the Bishop’s Stortford Climate Group.
The aim is for it to run four times a year on Saturday afternoons from April. The £600 grants will cover hall hire, a £190 card reader for payments, refreshments and access to the Repair Café online system,
The movement was founded by Martine Postma, who organised the first in Amsterdam in 2009, and there are now over 2,500 Repair Cafés worldwide.
The climate group expects the café to become self-funding by its fourth session.
The aim is for residents of Bishop’s Stortford to save money and be more sustainable by giving broken items a new lease of life, diverting them from landfills, and learning repair skills so that replacement items do not need to be manufactured and purchased.
The climate group, with 18 core members, has recruited around 15 volunteers for the café.
The team has taken advice from Sustainable Sawbridgeworth, which already operates a successful Repair Café in the town.
The grant bid submitted to the town council said: “The Repair Cafe will be covered by the insurance policy held by Friends of the Earth, which specifically includes repair cafes run by affiliated organisations (including the Bishops Stortford Climate Group.)
“All electrical items will be PAT tested by a qualified individual before being returned.”
