Originally published at: What are the barriers facing repair businesses? - The Restart Project
We’re big fans of independent repair businesses here at The Restart Project. They are and always have been at the heart of the repair economy, providing local repair services day-in-day-out with an impressive amount of knowledge and skill.
So when we began planning our North London Repair Voucher pilot scheme in late 2024, we were pleased to be able to work more closely with the repair businesses in the area. We learnt a lot from reaching out to them to get involved in the scheme, and supporting those of them that chose to participate. In Autumn 2025 we conducted interviews with a number of businesses, to understand how the scheme was working for them and what they’d want to see from a future scheme. This feedback has been incorporated into planning for future schemes, and an evaluation which will be released in July.
We also asked some questions about what it’s like running a small repair business in general, to dig into what we’d been hearing whilst running the scheme. Here’s what we found out during the project:
Repair businesses for phones, laptops and other tech are thriving, but repair options for other products are more limited.
- Less than a third of the businesses we mapped initially offered repair of products that aren’t tech.
- Many of the non-tech businesses specialise in one or two product categories, meaning for any non-tech product category, there were only a handful of repair options – if any.
- For low value products like toasters and kettles, professional repair options are almost impossible to find: If a new product is £10 in a supermarket, how much is a customer going to be willing to spend repairing their old one?
We may not have (non tech) professional repair options for long.
- Many of the non-tech repair businesses are older, with owners edging towards retirement. One business retired during the scheme and another plans to retire next year.
The challenges that businesses are facing are all too familiar.
- It’s hard to get hold of original spare parts. They’re often prohibitively expensive, and some come with software locks that prevent the parts from working properly (part pairing).
- Product manuals are unavailable, so repair is more difficult and takes longer.
- Many talked of products being badly made and there were some brands that repair shops advised against trying to repair because the quality is so low.
- A number of businesses were thriving, with waiting lists for repairs. These and other businesses talked of the difficulty the faced in recruiting new repairers, because few people are interested or have the right skills. There is no accreditation scheme for repairing small electricals in the UK, and no nationally available training option.
- These issues all contribute to high operating costs, a challenge referred to by most of the businesses we spoke to.
The solutions are both systemic and local. Right to Repair policy could improve the design of products to make them more repairable, make spare parts more available and less costly, and ensure that manufacturers release their product manuals to make repair simpler and safer for independent repairers. Support for repair training, accreditation and apprenticeships would encourage more people to learn repair skills and become the professional repairers of tomorrow.
National—and international—policy change takes time, so we also need local solutions to support independent repair businesses. Local training options can be developed; we deliver training courses for beginners and intermediate fixers at our Fixing Factories, and a number of repair cafes are also developing training courses to help more people become fixers.
Local authorities can also help to reduce operating costs: Business rate relief, support with shop and storage rent, support with advertising. And of course vouchers can reduce the cost of repair for customers and help new people discover their local repair shops. We hope that long-term repair voucher schemes will be introduced in more areas and, ultimately, across the UK as a way to get more people into repairing and discovering their brilliant local repair shops.
We’ve now published our full findings in a new report:
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Download the full report (PDF, 3.7 MB)
Want to learn more?
Join our webinar on the 6th of July at 1pm UK time as we release the final report on our trial North London Repair Voucher scheme. We’ll discuss the scheme, the challenges facing repair businesses and the lessons we can take forward.