How to start a petition

Pick the right platform for the decision you want

An official government petition site puts your text in front of the body that can act and carries formal thresholds. A campaigning platform such as Change.org or 38 Degrees is better at reach and press, but has no formal trigger at all. Choose by asking who has to say yes.

• UK Parliament petitions: 10,000 signatures forces a government response; 100,000 means it is considered for a Westminster Hall debate.
• Council and devolved petition systems: lower thresholds, and the decision-maker is genuinely local.
• Change.org, 38 Degrees, Avaaz: no formal trigger, but far better for reach, media and organising.
• Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany each run their own parliamentary petition systems with their own rules.

Write an ask that can be granted

The most common reason a petition is rejected is that it asks the wrong body for something it cannot do. Name the department or authority, name the action — repeal, fund, publish, halt, review — and set a deadline if one applies. 'Stop the closure of the X ward at Y hospital before the 3 November board vote' is a petition. 'Save our NHS' is a slogan.

Keep the title under fifteen words and readable when it is pasted into a message with no other context, because that is how most people will meet it.

The first hundred signatures decide the rest

Petition platforms surface what is already moving. Line up the first fifty to a hundred signatures before you share widely: people who already know you, the group affected, the local forum or union branch. A petition that sits on nine signatures for a week rarely recovers.

Signing is the easy half

A signature is one line in a tally. A letter from a constituent, naming the same ask, is casework the office must handle. The petitions that move policy almost always run alongside a stream of individual letters to members — so ask your signers to write, not only to sign, and give them the link that finds their own representative.