A CHESHIRE West community funding page helped a Chester village repair café get up and running.

Tattenhall Repair Café raised nearly £3,000 through the Cheshire West Crowd, providing an opportunity for the local community to get household equipment repaired and helping tackle the Climate Emergency at the same time.

The Cheshire West Crowd, which is being run by Cheshire West and Chester Council in partnership with Spacehive, is the ideal chance for community-led ideas to be created so the borough can become more vibrant, resilient and connected.

Tattenhall Repair Café ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on the Cheshire West Crowd in spring 2022, receiving donations from 40 different backers and accessing funding pots from both Cheshire West and Chester Council and Tattenhall Parish Council.

The repair sessions, which are part of the Transition Tattenhall project, are held monthly at the Barbour Institute as a group of volunteers receive equipment from the local community and work their magic.

Peter Radley, who helps run Transition Tattenhall and the Repair Café, said: “The process with the Cheshire West Crowd worked well and the Spacehive staff were really helpful.

“They gave us a lot of guidance and it’s a comprehensive set up so it makes you think about your project.

“When we came to actually doing the crowdfunding, we used social media and the community just got behind us.

“The good thing was that we were able to say you’d only pay money if the project actually goes ahead so people knew they were putting money towards a viable project.

“As part of Tattenhall Parish Council’s annual funding round, it gave us £500 towards the Repair Café and we added this towards our crowdfunding total on the Cheshire West Crowd.

“Cheshire West and Chester Council also supported our project and that was a big help because, while the project might look like a simple thing, there are costs for room hire, insurance and electrical testing equipment.”

Tattenhall Repair Café has been a real hit with the local community.

Peter added: “We were full of people, our repairers were busy all the time and we actually overran by nearly an hour [on our first session] because we had so much to do.

“Everybody was really pleased and we repaired loads of kit, stopping equipment going to landfill.

“We’re against equipment going to landfill, want to reduce consumption and, if we can fix something for someone, we will.

“People were really happy to see a zip going into their jacket, a table being mended, a pushchair being fixed or other simple things that you wouldn’t normally pay people to do, throwing it away and getting another one.

“We’re not interested in major repairs that you might get a tradesperson to do as these are small bits of kit that you might normally throw away.

“We’ve got a good team, but we do need to rotate people and they’re all volunteers so we’re always looking for new people to get involved.”

After launching in 2021, the Cheshire West Crowd has already had two funding rounds and, with around £400,000 contributed by the council and nearly £760,000 raised in total by local projects, it is one of the most successful initiatives Spacehive has run.

Project creator workshops will be run by the council and Spacehive to help projects get ready for crowdfunding, with monthly support sessions taking place in local libraries from August to November 2022.

The deadline for projects being added to the Cheshire West Crowd is Wednesday, November 2, as the council will be allocating funds from the various pots in December 2022.

All projects will need to reach their crowdfunding targets on the Cheshire West Crowd by Tuesday, February 28, 2023.

The following funding pots will be available from Cheshire West and Chester Council in the autumn 2022 round.

  • Community Innovation Fund – £250,000
  • Youth Fund – £20,000
  • Cheshire West Crowd Fund – £90,000
  • COVID Recovery and Renewal Fund – £47,885
  • Climate Change Emergency Fund – £10,000
  • Tackling Poverty Fund – £9,865