Rural Community Gateway

The Village Halls Summit held on 23rd February 2008 in Aviemore brought together around 250 people from across rural Scotland. The event was a resounding success, and was fully-booked well in advance. If you weren’t able to get to a place, or couldn’t make it to this important conference, you can now find out more about the event in the Village Halls Summit Report, available in our documents library.

The Summit was organised by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) and funded by the Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and ILA Scotland.

In the report, you’ll find all the presentations given on the day, a summary and notes from the round table discussions and details put to an expert panel. You can also find out what people thought of the event by looking at the evaluation results. The report is easy to read and has lots of interesting content.

Feedback from the event was very positive, with everyone agreeing there should be more events on village halls and community facilities. It was suggested that some of these should be regional events, and that more practical information and training would also be beneficial.

Read interesting presentations

Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment Richard Lochhead gave the keynote speech at the conference. In the report, you will find an edited transcript of his speech, which included information on the Scotland Rural Development Programme and potential funding for community facilities.

You can also read Sandra Hogg’s A Brief History of Village Halls presentation, a presentation on applying to the Rural Priorities part of the Scotland Rural Development Programme and case studies from four community facilities.

Lively discussions

You will also find a summary and notes from lively round table discussions. In groups of ten, delegates were asked to identify challenges and problems facing village halls. They were then asked to consider what needs to be done to address some of these problems, and who could undertake these actions.

Problems identified fell into five main categories:

• Difficulties sourcing and applying for funding
• Difficulties finding and accessing relevant information, advice and support
• Difficulties understanding and meeting regulatory and legislative requirements
• Difficulties retaining and recruiting volunteers (some specifically mentioned recruiting young people)
• Difficulties meeting increasing costs of utilities

You can read about these in more detail, and about suggested solutions, in the report.

What next?

In the conclusion of the report, you can read about the way forward for Scotland’s village halls and community facilities. SCVO believe it is vital that a Village Halls Support Service be set up to give dedicated support to the people who run community facilities. SCVO have been making the case for such a support service for five years, to successive governments. They believe the case is greatly strengthened by the results of the Summit.

The Village Halls Summit report is not a consultation document, but SCVO would be keen to hear your views on the content, and your ideas for keeping village halls and community facilities high on the political agenda. You can send your comments and ideas to Norman MacAskill, SCVO’s Rural Policy Manager at Norman.macaskill@scvo.org.uk 

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• Village Halls Summit success
• Village Halls Summit to map the way forward
• Halls campaign goes to Holyrood
• Next steps for village halls campaign
• Salmond briefed on Halls for All campaign
• Swinney signs Halls for All petition

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Norette Ferns

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