The borough has been chosen as one of four London location when the initiative will be introduced using lottery cash

An existing 'Fixing Factory' in Camden (credit We Are Possible) — An existing ‘Fixing Factory’ in Camden (credit We Are Possible)

Haringey residents will soon be able to get their broken household gadgets fixed for free thanks to a charitable initiative.

Climate action charity Possible and social enterprise The Restart Project have been awarded £1.27million in National Lottery funding to scale up their innovative ‘Fixing Factory’ model to three new locations across London – including Haringey.

Possible and Restart launched Fixing Factory pilots in Brent and Camden in 2022, creating spaces where people can bring in broken electronics and appliances to be fixed for free, while gaining the skills they need to make repairs themselves in the future.

Electrical waste is the fastest growing waste stream globally and is a significant contributor to climate change, with the UK being the second highest producer of e-waste per capita globally.

The absence of affordable fixing services exacerbates the ‘poverty premium’ for low-income communities, with cheaper appliances breaking and needing replacement more regularly than more expensive products – and therefore costing more over time.

Fixing Factories are designed to empower local communities by teaching people how to repair their own stuff and giving broken products a second lease of life, saving them money while helping reduce carbon emissions by avoiding the need for new items.

It comes as 73% of Londoners have expressed a willingness to repair items rather than replace them if the process was more straightforward, while nearly the same amount of people have a desire to acquire repair skills to save money. But accessibility remains a hurdle, with nearly two-thirds of people in London saying there is a scarcity of nearby repair shops, and it’s too expensive and hard to find other options.

Fixing Factories have already engaged nearly 1,000 people in community repair sessions, saving over three tonnes of e-waste and 53 tonnes of CO2e over the last two years.

At the Queen’s Crescent Fixing Factory in Camden, the most popular things that people bring in are kettles, food processors and lamps, and they have a high success rate fixing them. With big-name vacuum cleaners, they have an unbroken record of getting them working again.

This grant comes from the Climate Action Fund, a £100million commitment over ten years from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, to support communities across the UK to take action on climate change and involve more people in climate action.

The new funding will expand the Fixing Factory network in London to four sites in Camden, Haringey, Hackney/Islington and Acton over the next three years. The four sites will develop blueprints for future Fixing Factories, supporting a vision to bring affordable fixing and repair to high streets and communities in the UK.

Dermot Jones, Fixing Factories project manager, said: “It is incredibly exciting to be able to continue our work at the Queen’s Crescent Fixing Factory and open up three more Fixing Factories across London.

“E-waste is a significant problem in addressing climate change; it’s a symptom of our culture of overconsumption, and is the fastest growing waste stream globally. There is an increasing appetite among the public and businesses alike to get things fixed rather than bin them.

“With this funding, not only can we continue reducing e-waste on a local level, we can start building a culture of making your stuff last longer, where people see the opportunities of keeping appliances going rather than trading them in for a newer model – which is all the more important during both a climate crisis and a cost of living crisis.”

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