Sign our letter to get a fairer deal from insurers

How to repair in your community
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Hi everyone,

We have started work on an exciting new project which we hope will be of interest.

Over the course of the past few years we have had multiple conversations with insurers, as well as other repair cafés about their insurance, and have found that insurance companies often really struggle to grasp exactly what a repair café does, and hence the type of cover we need. This misunderstanding often results in large disparities in the price and accessibility of insurance across the repair café network. We would like to start to tackle this problem and so have drafted a letter to the Association of British Insurers, in collaboration with Benthyg (Wales’ Library of Things) as we find many communities run both a repair café and a library of things (LoT), with the aims of:

  • Providing more clarity about how LoTs and repair cafés operate
  • Providing reassurance about the processes and policies in place
  • Identifying any measures that the insurance industry expect to be in place
  • Consistent insurance cover across the repair café and LoT networks with fairer pricing

We will be sending this letter to the insurance industry body and would love to be able to include as many repair café signatories as possible in order to demonstrate the size and strength of the UK’s repair café network.

If you would like to include your signature on the letter, which you can below, then please email us info@repaircafewales.org with your agreement or comment below by COB 16th September ; we will be including organisation names only - no need to send individual names and job titles. We have tried to contact as many repair cafés and LoTs in the UK as we can, however, it is likely some have been missed, so if you could please share this project and the letter with your networks, it would be much appreciated.

In line with this project we have also established a Facebook group specifically for people who run repair cafés, networks of repair cafés, and LoTs. The repair and share movement is growing rapidly and we hope a united body of those who contribute to that growth will enable us to not only tackle the issue of insurance, but also contribute to wider policy discussions in future, plus share information on the practicalities of setting up and running repair cafés and LoTs. The group can be found [here] and we would love for you to join and to invite other repair cafés and LoTs in your network to do the same.

Best wishes,

Repair Cafe Wales

Letter to the Association of British Insurers.pdf (132.8 KB)

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Good evening, this is an excellent approach. In Belgium too we have been working on it for some time now. It’s not easy because insurance companies don’t have a good understanding of the business and don’t have the means to offer an adapted service. However, we hope that we will soon find a broker who will try to look into the matter in more detail.

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Hi @Luc_Deriez, thanks for responding to our post. It would be really interesting to compare the different approaches to repair cafe insurance between Belgium and the UK. Would a further conversation around this be of interest?

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Have shared with our share and repair network in Australia. The issue with insurance is a common problem. Repair Cafes are known to be paying over $1,000 AUD per year for coverage. Repair cafes that are run out of some community houses in Victoria [that meet specific requirements] are covered by the house insurance via the State Government.

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Why not yes, it is always interesting to compare what can be compared even if the parameters are sometimes different. I put my colleague @Jonathan_Vigne who is also following this subject.

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A quick reminder to everyone that if you’d like your UK group to be included in this letter, please reach out to Repair Café Wales today :pray:

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West Fleetwood Computer Clinic are very happy to sign this letter and support this initiative. Thanks.

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Hi @Anne_Carlos that’s brilliant, thank you!

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Hello @Repair_Cafe_Wales !
We can indeed meet to compare the different insurances between Belgium and the UK. We received a proposal from an insurer a few month ago, so we can show you something (around 190€ per year)
Maybe we can also talk about this as part of Sharepair ? What do you think @james @ugo ? :slight_smile:

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Hi @Mend_It_Australia thanks so much this is really helpful info! Perhaps it would be useful for us to have a further chat and compare the approach to insurance in the UK and Australia?