A CLIMATE charity focusing on simple fixes which can be made locally has held its first repair café.

Biggar Area Climate Care (BACC) chair Janet Moxley said that 50 items were received at the recent Saturday morning event and of those 34 were made usable again.

The idea behind a repair café is that local people with skills offer their services voluntarily to repair things that are broken, which might otherwise be thrown away or stay in a drawer waiting to be fixed.

Ms Moxley said: “With generous funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, BACC was able to appoint a part-time co-ordinator, Tess Goodwin, to organise all aspects of the cafés. Twenty-seven people attended the recent event in the Arcadia Music shop’s hall in Biggar.

“The volunteer repairers covered electronic, electrical, wooden, sewing, darning, gluing, tool sharpening, watch, clock and instrument repairs.

“In total 50 items were brought to the café of which 34 were able to be repaired and a few others were partially repaired.

“At the same time the people who bring their items for repair can have a cup of tea/coffee and cakes/biscuits so the event becomes a social one as well.

“Everyone agreed the event was a huge success and very enjoyable.”

There will be five further repair cafés during the next 10 months with the first at Broughton Village Hall in January, with the date to be publicised early in the new year.

After that, volunteers will meet again in Biggar in March, followed by Crawford (May), Biggar (August) and Symington (September).

Ms Moxley added: “Look out for anything you need to get repaired and bring it along!”

To get involved as a volunteer repairer or find out more about the project you can visit biggarareaclimate.weebly.com/repair-cafes.html or email biggarareaclimatecare@outlook.com