Repair Café Leighton Buzzard attends Parliament to ask MPs to fix throwaway economy
The Repair Café LB and Totally Leighton Buzzard joined 100 repair groups from across the UK on March 25 at the 3rd Parliamentary Repair Café held in the House of Commons, to call for policies to make it easier to repair our things.
In the same week, the Repair Café LB also celebrated three years of community mending and fixing.
The Parliamentary event was organised by The Restart Project and Back Market, and supported by other organisations including SUEZ and Green Alliance.
The Restart Project and Back Market have run similar events for the last two years, attended by 60 MPs. This year, the event was even bigger, with around 100 repair groups attending and representing all four UK nations. Collectively the UK Repair Cafe movement is calling for ambitious repair and reuse policies and celebrating the over 110 MPs that have signed up to the Repair and Reuse Declaration. On the day of the Repair Café a further 31 MPs signed the Declaration adding momentum to the calls for change.
The event heard powerful speeches from Helen Hayes MP, the honorary 100th MP to sign the Declaration and from Mary Creagh MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Nature at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Mary Creagh encouraged all the groups represented by saying "We need your repair cafes. We need your wisdom. We need your kindness."
Team Repair gave a live demonstration to a class of school children who learned to fix their first gadgets. We also heard the inspiring story of BBC TV presenter, Sean Fletcher’s broken and much cherished “TV famous” wedding present – a Breville toaster – which was successfully repaired by Mikayla, a volunteer repairer. His personal story about his now-repaired, deeply sentimental toaster encapsulated exactly why repair matters – its never just about the object, but also about community and hope.
With the Circular Economy Growth Plan due to publish their recommendations this spring, the repair community took a timely chance to influence their local politicians. 4 in 5 people in the UK want the government to support repair more. It reduces our impact on the planet, saves us money and can be incredibly rewarding. But for repair and reuse to thrive in the UK, we need real policy change to support it.
Totally Leighton Buzzard and the Repair Cafe Leighton Buzzard are grateful for the existing support of local Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard MP, Alex Mayer who signed the Declaration in October 2024. But there are still many other MPs across the region in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and more widely who are yet to sign the Declaration. Together with other Repair Cafe representatives we urged all MPs attending to support change to repair legislation. We also discussed measures that we hope to see taken forward from the Circular Economy Growth Plan.
The Parliamentary Repair Cafe event was held in the same week that the Repair Cafe Leighton Buzzard celebrated its 3rd birthday of running monthly community repair events which is s fantastic achievement for all the volunteers
The group's next event will be held on Saturday 25th April running from 10.30am to 1.30pm at the local Royal British Legion. At the event, members of the public are encouraged to bring a wide variety of portable household items and textile items to be repaired by local volunteer fixers. The event is held in conjunction with Leighton Buzz Cycles and Buzz Community Energy. You can pre-register to attend at https://repaircafe.leightonbuzzard.org. All are welcome. It is free to attend and donations are appreciated to cover our costs (insurance, hall hire etc) and refreshments are provided. New volunteers are also welcomed to support the rewarding work and spirit of the Repair Café.
The Repair Cafe LB has been running since March 2023 and is held monthly. In total the group meets 10 times a year with exception of breaks in August and December. Since the Repair Cafe LB started, the group has helped avoid over 7914 kg of CO2 and 1463 kg waste. During that time, the group has worked on well over 1000 items and repaired over 566 items with over 250 other items repairable (but which need more time and additional parts).
Edwina Osborne, one of the Repair Cafe LB founders and coordinators, says: "For the past 3 years we have helped the local Leighton Buzzard community to get support with repairs. The Repair Cafe Leighton Buzzard shows what’s possible when a community come together, but we also see the barriers first-hand: products designed to be hard to fix, spare parts that are unavailable or unaffordable, and perfectly good materials going to waste. Strengthening repair and reuse policy is essential if the UK is serious about building a circular economy that saves households money, reduces waste, and creates local green jobs."
Fiona Dear, Co-Director, The Restart Project, says: “We’re excited to have returned to Parliament with representatives of almost 100 of the UK’s repair cafes. Repair is something we can all do to save money and reduce waste, but it’s often too hard to fix our stuff. By holding the Parliamentary Repair Cafe, we wanted to show that repair is popular, and that government support to help us to give things a second life is also popular and the right thing to do for the planet to save resources and waste.“
Katy Medlock, Back Market, says: “We were thrilled to return to Parliament for our third consecutive year alongside our partner, The Restart Project, championing repair and reuse. At Back Market, we’re on a mission to shift behaviour around new tech, encouraging more people to make the most from what they already own. Extending a device’s lifespan from 2.5 to 10 years can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, which is why we’re calling for greater support of the Repair and Reuse Declaration to help accelerate progress toward a stronger, more sustainable future for repair.”