Saved from the scrap heap

For Peter Cousins, work closely mirrors life. Cast aside from employment when he became disabled, he now runs a project where the old and apparently useless is recycled by young trainees who might also have been written off

I’m the chairman of Brighter Future, a workshop which I founded in 2005. We train disabled people alongside trained technicians to recycle and repair mobility equipment that would otherwise be scrapped. Things like scooters, walking frames and rise and recline beds.

We might get ten damaged wheelchairs from the NHS and we make six good ones out of them and keep the rest of the parts for spares.

The average price of a new scooter is £2,500 to £3,000 but we sell them for £400 or £500.

My day usually starts at nine o’clock and I leave the workshop at about two. I can only work in a sitting position for about four hours and I’ve got an office in my bedroom and I lie with a laptop above me so I can carry on working until ten or eleven at night. My main job is talking to firms asking for old equipment and we’ve recently had ten palettes worth of equipment that had been lying in a warehouse for ten years. Our warehouse is 6,000 square feet and is full of equipment waiting to be recycled.

The idea for Brighter Future Workshop came about when I was running Shopmobility in Ormskirk. One of our scooters had a puncture and a young guy who was quite severely disabled threw himself out of his wheelchair and started taking the wheel off with a spanner to repair it.

I tried to raise money but was scoffed at by people who couldn’t grasp the concept. Their approach was “how can disabled people repair or recycle mobility equipment?”.

Although our workshop is in Skelmersdale, we sell nationally and abroad too; 90 per cent of our sales come from the eBay website. We’re working flat-out, but we’re coping with demand and have just taken over the premises next door. We’re turning into an independent living centre where people will be able to try out the equipment we make.

I’m 63 now but I don’t want to retire. I was left on the scrap heap when I became a wheelchair-user and I couldn’t inspect explosives and dangerous chemicals and I had to take early retirement. So I want to leave a legacy of supporting disabled people to believe in themselves, be active in the community and move on in life.

We’ve won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and I hope that will help secure our future as a self-sustaining social enterprise.

Anyone could do what I do, but to succeed you need to find a niche market, persevere with funders who turn you down and possess the ability to motivate the workforce.

• stores.ebay.co.uk/ Brighter-Future-Mobility-Equipment_W0QQ_armrsZ

•• Peter Cousins was talking to Sunil Peck