A repair café which is one of the busiest in the country is readying itself for an annual week of celebrating community work.

From today to Sunday, June 16, more than a quarter of a million people across the country are expected to take part in the UK’s Big Green Week, a nationwide celebration of action on climate change.

The Weymouth Repair Café will be running today - Saturday, June 8 - to celebrate the week with an event from 10.30am to 12.30pm at the Top Club on Louviers Road, Littlemoor, Weymouth.

Volunteers are on hand to mend your items for free - but welcome donations. 

It will be the last chance to pop along to a café until September.   

(Image: Weymouth Repair Café)

Since it was founded as a Facebook group five years ago, the Weymouth Repair Café has recorded more fixes than any other in the UK on the international Repair Café monitoring system.

Founder, Ros Dean, 69, was new to the area when she launched the café in 2019 after her daughter told her the idea- and since her post she has had an overwhelming response from the community.

She said: “When people bring in their broken items, they’re not just looking for a repair— they also find connection. We don’t have queues at the café - people sit down, have a cup of tea and chat while they wait. Sometimes the things we fix are of huge sentimental value to people too.

(Image: Weymouth Repair Café) “We repair all sorts of things, from electronics and clocks to offering woodwork, gluing and sewing. We can fix everyday items like laptops, but we have also had some unusual ones- everything from Daleks, Batmobiles and lightsabres to sentimental things like dolls and music that people have kept since their childhoods.

Recalling one of her most memorable repairs, she said: “I remember a woman who brought in a 75-year-old teddy bear. It was missing an eye and his nose and the hands and feet had worn thin.

(Image: Weymouth Repair Café) Mrs Dean said: “Our repairer, Annette, replaced both eyes with handmade glass ones, as well as replacing the nose, some fabric, adding some stuffing and stitching him up again. The owner was thrilled that she had her teddy bear back - it was given to when she was just 18 months old.”

(Image: Weymouth Repair Café)

The café currently has 55 volunteers who work on items the public bring in, but an important part is swapping knowledge and skills to give people confidence to try fixing things themselves.

(Image: Weymouth Repair Café) Mrs Dean added: “This knowledge sharing is crucial, especially as skills like sewing aren’t taught much in schools anymore.

“We’re really proud that in the last two years, we have recorded more repairs than any other repair café in the UK- almost 600 a year altogether.

“Our motto is don’t bin it- fix it- and it is my hope to see more and more people taking that on too."