A café which helps residents fix household items and treasured possessions has been named best in the country

Volunteers at Repair Café Weymouth have fixed everything from sentimental family treasures to lightsabers, and even a ride-on triceratops, in true Jurassic Coast fashion.

The café has just won Local Community Group of the Year at Nextdoor’s Good Neighbour Awards 2024. 

Ros Dean started the volunteer-run Repair Café in 2019, not long after moving to the area.

She took inspiration from Martine Postma, the Dutch environmentalist behind the global movement, which started in Amsterdam in 2009.

After receiving an overwhelming amount of support from her community, she arranged a meeting at a local pub one Saturday morning.

Over 40 potential volunteers showed up, excited to be a part of the Repair Café initiative, and five years on, its just been declared the UK’s Community Group of the Year in community platform, Nextdoor’s, annual Good Neighbourhood Awards.

There are no queues at the Repair Café, with a numbered ticketing system in place to save people waiting on their feet.

Customers are given repair forms along with their tickets and take a seat at a table, where a meet-and-greet volunteer will join them and assist them on filling out their form with details of what repairs are required.

Since it started, the volunteers at Repair Café Weymouth have fixed around 2,500 items, making it one of the biggest in the UK.

Items range from sentimental family treasures, to toy robots, lightsabers, and even a ride-on animatronic triceratops called Kota.

Ros is amazed by what the Repair Café’s volunteers can do, from their “electronic whizzes” to glueing experts whose repairs look invisible.

One of the glueing repairs Ros remembers fondly is that of a music box that someone’s father had brought back from a trip to Asia in the 50s or 60s.

Ros said: “It was an Ivory rickshaw with turning wheels, that had characters and fitting that needed regluing. She hadn’t heard it play in years, I remember hearing a tremor in her voice when it played again.”

There is no charge for repairs, just a request for a donation which goes to a local charity chosen by volunteers at their annual meeting.