A NEW repair cafe has been launched in Salisbury.

Members of Salisbury Repair Café held their very first session on Saturday (November 2) at the Quaker Meeting House on Wilton Road when they invited residents to bring along their broken items to be repaired.

Co-organiser of the repair cafe event, Benji Goehl, said “We were staggered that a total of 41 residents turned up with items for repairs from radios, vacuum cleaners, lamps, clocks, jackets, sweater, broken crockery and pedal bikes. Our fantastic team of volunteers were able to repair 23 items and a whopping 83kg of weight of items did not go to landfill.”

More than 27 volunteers provided tea, coffee or cakes or registered visitors or were able to repair items.

They were also able to give advice on where to get spare parts that could be ordered and brought along to be repaired at the next repair cafe.

Jimmy Walker, a co-organiser of Salisbury Repair Cafe added: “The success of Salisbury’s First Repair Café was all partly due to the financial support from Salisbury Area Board who provided a grant to get the Repair Café off the ground and to the Quaker Meeting House who welcomed us with open arms and provided us with a venue. Jimmy said it was great to get involved in bike repairs and we even made one good bike from two that had problems and were pleased when the owner was able to cycle off home and walked back to take the other one too.”

The Mayor of Salisbury, John Walsh and the Mayoress Carrie Walsh, formally opened the Salisbury Repair Cafe.

Volunteers are already revving up their sewing machines and soldering irons ready for the next event on November 30.

Salisbury Repair Cafe is still in need of volunteers to sign up or find out more go to salisburyrepaircafe.org or go to the Facebook page.