Our Repair Cafe was started in 2024 by James Tinker and kindly hosted by the lovely people of Kingsway Church in Beckenham. We were grateful to have the support of Greener and Cleaner, the Bromley environmental charity, for our first two years. Our first event took place in August 2024.
When Kingsway Church sadly closed at the end of 2025, we moved to our current home at the fabulous Christ Central Church in Penge.
In November 2026, we founded our own not-for-profit community organisation, Beckenham and Penge Repair Cafe CIC, to manage our work. This gives us more flexibility about how we operate and the kind of repair activities we can offer.
We have a volunteer group of around 20-30 repairers and typically have around 12-15 repairers at each event, covering textiles, electronics and small electrical appliances, hifi and audio equipment, mechanical repairs, toys, woodwork and much more.
