The Halls for All campaign highlights the vital role that village halls and community buildings play in Scotland's rural communities, and emphasises that investing in their survival must be a key part of the Executive's Rural Development policy.

SCVO are launching an e-petition to the Scottish Parliament on 1st June.

The petition calls on the Executive to:

* Create a Scottish Halls Fund to refurbish or modernise community buildings to increase the level of community use and improve the range and quality of services provided
* Fund a Village Halls Support Service
* Establish a fair relief scheme for water charges for all charities that will maintain the exemption beyond 2010
* Work with appropriate partners to cut regulatory burdens and support the interests of Hall Committees.

The petition will be hosted as an e-petition on the Parliament's website until 27th July 2007 before being formally submitted to the Public Petitions Committee.

SCVO's Rural Information Officer Sandra Hogg said, "Village and community halls in Scotland are inclusive community spaces that perform a vital role in rural areas. They are valued public assets, a focus for community activity and house a range of community services. But they face a slow-burning crisis with poor funding, rising costs and too much red tape.

The volunteer committees that run these halls are finding it difficult to keep them running as funding has been cut and costs rise. It is time that their value was recognised by putting a new grant scheme and support service in place."

It's vital that this petition gets wide support so that we can show the Scottish Executive the strength of feeling throughout rural Scotland.

There are two ways you can sign this petition:

Go the e-petition on the Scottish Parliament website where you can also access addition information and make comments
Download the petition and additional information, print, sign and return
You can also help publicise the campaign by:

Putting copies of the poster and petition form in your hall, shop, pub or post-office.
Passing copies to the rest of your committee
Forwarding the e-petition to your networks, friends, supporters and colleagues

For the petition, forms and more information, please click here...