BUDE’S repair cafe opened on February 23, and welcomed locals to bring their broken items to be repaired, free of charge.

Items such as toasters, lighters, radios, clothes, bags and even bikes could be repaired during the opening day.The idea of the repair cafe is to help people save money, learn new skills and most importantly, reduce waste. Bude’s mayor, Bob Willingham, said: “What a great initiative. I had the honour of opening the Bude repair cafe at the Neetside Centre on Saturday. Organisers Eilidh, Debs and Miranda with a team of volunteers set out to repair items that would otherwise been thrown away.”

During the day’s work, 30 items were repaired and not binned. Sharon of Webbs Electrics had volunteered her services to PAT test electrical items.

Chris from Love Your Bike helped people with issues with their bikes. Martin Webb from PC and Laptop Solutions was on hand to fix issues and offer some helpful advise to those in attendance, his top tip for printers was, ‘a used gate never rusts’ by which he meant, print something out once a week to avoid your print head drying out.

The repair cafe will now be holding an event every last weekend of the month from 10.30am to 12.30am at the Neetside Community Centre.

Cllr Willingham continued: “I’m sure during the next one on March 30, they will be inundated even more with customers. Well done guys, a huge success.”

Having been one of three founders, Eilidh Maccormick was delighted with the success of the repair cafe’s launch. She said: “We are so pleased at how the first repair cafe was received and how successful. As one of three founding members of the repair cafe, I feel my personal dream to have somewhere the community can come together with shared interests and values, to use their talents and help each other whilst learning new skills, was truly realised — I have not stopped smiling and can’t wait for the next one!”

She added: “A huge thank you all the volunteers — without them the repair cafe would never have happened. A special thanks to Sharon at Webb Electrical who donated her time to the repair cafe for PAT testing and is now going to every one!”

Deb Rosser, chair of A Greener Bude and another founding member, said: “On behalf of A Greener Bude, I would like to give a big shout out to the amazing team at Repair Cafe Bude for an incredible launch event on Saturday. The repair cafe has been a project we wanted to get off the ground from the start and Tilly and Eilidh have taken the idea and run with it. It certainly highlights how fantastic the local community here is — with Neetside Community Centre offering the venue, the volunteer repairers who are offering their time, expertise and resources not only to try and prevent items from heading to landfill but to up-skill us to have a go at repairing stuff, the volunteers who ran the operation, the volunteers who baked, served incredible refreshments in the cafe and finally to the local people who brought their broken stuff to get mended.

“What a great morning everyone. Bring on the next cafe!”

Miranda Clarke (Tilly), manager of Neetside Community Centre and a founding member, added: “We loved being part of Repair Cafe Bude, the atmosphere in the building was brilliant with so many skills being shared and a real feeling of community spirit and enterprise. In total we have 30 items brought in for repair, and some visitors came just to have a cup of tea and eat the delicious cake in the cafe area. We can’t thank the volunteers enough, for their time and their expertise and most of all their passion for fixing things.”

The total number of items brought in on the day was 30, which included two sewing machines, a Kindle, boot zip, clock radio, BMX child’s bike, scissors, fan heater, coat sleeve and seams reinforced.

The total number of items repaired was 18, of which seven were advised on or ‘diagnosed’, and five were found to be ‘non-repairable’. There were 17 volunteers at the launch.