Last year, we had the chance to do something we’ve dreamed about for a while and ran the first trial of vouchers for electrical repair in the UK. The trial was delivered by us and ReLondon, with funding from North London Waste Authority and support from Fixfirst and local councils. Over a period of 12 months, we worked with repair businesses in the seven boroughs of North London to make repair more accessible for local residents and boost the local repair economy. Now, we’re ready — and excited — to share our findings from the trial.
Our trial is not the first of its kind around the world, so we were joined by Karin Huber-Heim to talk about the initiatives that paved the way for a scheme like this to happen in London. Karin is president of the Circular Economy Forum Austria and holds the City of Vienna Endowed Professorship Circular Economy & Transformative Business Models — who better to talk to about this?
Charting the origins of repair vouchers
Karin guided us through the story of repair vouchers in Austria, from the beginning of the scheme in Graz, to a thriving implementation in Vienna, to the now nationwide Appliance Saver Bonus. The model has proved popular around Europe, with iterations active in Germany and France also.
She shared how in Vienna in particular, they built on existing repair infrastructure. Their repair business network had already been supporting the city for over 20 years by the time repair vouchers came into the picture, meaning that they had an engaged and trusted foundation of businesses to activate. It’s an idea that struck our imagination, as we found that without such a network in place in London, it was a challenge to find businesses that were up for the task and had the capacity to get involved.
The Austrian scheme has undergone many iterations, reacting to fraudulent activity, government changes, and funding difficulties. Karin shared how this affected uptake of the scheme with the public but also the impact that it had on businesses. We were lucky to have seen these different ways of implementation, as well as those in other countries, to inform our own version in London.
So what about the North London trial?
We shared some of the key takeaways from the North London trial, including some of the aspects that made it particularly effective. These included the fact that it was:
- Frictionless for customers, meaning that there was a low bar to entry to partake and no financial risk up front.
- We included tech repair businesses, meaning that we had a larger pool of businesses involved. It was striking how few repair businesses existed for small household appliances, despite a demand for these repairs. Our report into the barriers that repair businesses face came out of our work on this scheme and covers why this is and what policy-makers can do to help.
- It had a significant enough discount of 50% off the cost of a repair, which Karin suggests is the threshold that removes the ‘psychological barrier’, encouraging people to use the vouchers. Cost as the main incentive for people to use the vouchers definitely rang true for us as we found that 60% of applicants cited cost saving as their motivation for using the scheme and the same percentage had an annual salary of less than £30,000.
The outlook for repair vouchers in the UK and Austria
Repair vouchers proved popular in our trial. In fact, it received an NPS score of 96%, meaning that the vast majority of customers would recommend it to their friends and family. And in Austria they’re popular too. We discussed how a rise in repair culture in general, thanks to community repair is only leading to more of a demand for these kinds of initiatives.
Karin says though, that repair vouchers alone are not enough for a robust repair economy, governments must support other infrastructure like community repair groups, bring back repair education and channels for budding fixers to become repair technicians, and implement policies like EPR based financing and VAT reform. She highlighted that these interventions must not be tied to any one party’s ideology so as to ensure their longevity. And its true that access to repair is a rare a bipartisan issue, we found that by looking at the popularity of the London trial and the desire for users to return to repair shops again and again.
The reason that Karin is especially interested in longevity, is the impacts she has already witnessed in Austria. The scheme faced multiple interruptions and the unpredictability led to major disruptions for businesses due to dips in demand for repairs. We need continued and secure funding and political support for it to be sustainable. With the Austrian scheme set to end this year, she shared her expectation that there will be an outcry from the public for it to return. With the knowledge that visible support from citizens is essential, we both hope that long term support for repair vouchers will happen and that these kind of schemes can continue to prove their value.
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[Feature image by North London Waste Authority]
The post Restart Podcast Ep. 106: Tracing repair vouchers from Vienna to London appeared first on The Restart Project.
