Katerina Stechman and Liz Clark started a monthly Penarth Repair Café in June 2018 - a wonderful community eco event where people with skills offer their time to fix items that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

The café is open on the 4th Sunday of the month between 2 - 5 pm (excluding August and December) in St. Augustine's Parish hall.

Since their launch, their volunteers have seen 824 household items and repaired 472 of those.

They hope this equates to 472 items not filling a hole in the ground as well as prolonged use of favourite items and a concurrent reduction in unnecessary spending.

Repair Cafes started in the Netherlands a decade ago and there are nearly 100 cafes in the UK - and over 1,700 cafes worldwide: Repair Cafe

Katerina Stechman said: ''You might have seen Hugh Graham's article in the Sunday Times last year, heard about us on the radio or read about repair cafes online.

''Our volunteers in Penarth have repaired vacuum cleaners, fixed squeaky brakes on bicycles, repaired clasps on necklaces, sewn up holes in jumpers, re-glued wooden furniture, fixed laptop computers, televisions, record players, CD players, kettles, lawnmowers and all manner of things that just need a bit of TLC, a fuse, a screw, a stitch, a bit of glue.

''As well as fixing broken household items, we also help Penarth residents without the manual dexterity or eyesight to change fuses, plus or sew holes.

''Rachel and the team at the Parish Church Hall on Albert Road host the cafés and serve hot and cold drinks and homemade cakes which visitors can enjoy while they wait to be seen by our fixers.''

Extra volunteers are always welcome so if you feel that you would like to be part of the team, you can find us on social media, Facebook - Repair Cafe Wales (Penarth), Instagram @penarthrepaircafe, or email us – [email protected]

The next cafe session will be on March the 22nd. You can bring your items to this event or just pop in for a cup of tea and meet the team.