Cholsey Repair Café is a voluntary initiative to reduce waste, share repair skills and enhance our village community. We try to prevent useful items being thrown away.

How does it work? You bring a broken or worn item to us and we do our best to help you mend it, or advise what else can be done. You pay for parts and we hope that you will make a donation towards our operating costs.

Bring almost anything that one person can carry, but see the exceptions under “what not to bring”, below. Here are some of the things we’ve fixed:

• Food mixer
• Toaster
• Bicycle
• Tools
• Garden equipment
• Clothing, bags and other textiles
• Toys
• Radio
• PC / lap-top

• We can’t tackle washing machines, fridges or other large white goods. This includes microwave ovens because the radiation can be dangerous if accidentally switched on during repair.
• There’s not much we can do with mobile phones, smaller tablets or other miniaturised and highly compact equipment, apart from checking batteries and removable parts (like a memory card). We can’t replace broken screens, etc.
• Safety equipment, such as smoke alarms, because we cannot certify it as fit for purpose after repair.