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PE1943, which was lodged by Victoria Mungall, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce financial support mechanisms that would enable local authorities to work alongside developers in bringing brownfield sites back into use while also discouraging developments on greenfield land. When we last considered the petition, on 26 October, we agreed to wait until the national planning framework 4 was finalised. We also agreed to write to a number of organisations seeking their views.

Members will be aware that NPF4 has now been finalised and was approved by Parliament on 11 January. We have also received responses from Clyde Gateway, the Royal Town Planning Institute Scotland and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. I also note that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities declined to provide a formal response to the petition on this occasion.

The responses that we have received detail some of the challenges of developing long-term vacant and derelict sites, such as fragmented land ownership and ground conditions, while highlighting the funding streams that are available to support the redevelopment and regeneration of those sites. In particular, the Royal Town Planning Institute highlighted the work of the Scottish Land Commission on the matter and the recommendations to review and evaluate funding streams to ensure that they incorporate criteria that will help direct investment to parts of the country that need it most.

On that basis, do members have any suggestions?

In that part of the meeting, we will consider the beginnings of our draft report. I hope that, if we cannot complete that work today, we will be content to arrange for it to be completed in private at later meetings. Do members agree to that?

Members indicated agreement.

We thank the petitioner for raising the issue with us, but we have taken it as far as we can. Do members agree to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

I absolutely agree.

I would certainly be interested in writing to the minister to ask him what form he expects his open line of communication to take and whether he is able to confirm a structured and ongoing basis for that. As Carol Mochan suggested, we also want to write more formally to the Scottish Social Services Council to seek its views on the issues raised in the petition. We want a view on providing bursaries to all third- and fourth-year undergraduate social work students on work placements; an explanation of the criteria for assessing bursary applications for postgraduate students; and clarification on where members of the public can access information on the assessment criteria, because SPICe seemed to find that more problematic than it ought to be. If SPICe found it problematic, I do not quite know how other people are meant to find it more readily.

Are we content to keep the petition open and proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

Yes, he wanted to capture it. [Laughter.]

We will therefore keep the petition open. We will seek further information from those bodies, and we will invite the petitioners to join us at a future committee meeting in order to discuss directly with them their views on the responses that we receive and where we might take the petition. Do we agree to take that approach?

Members indicated agreement.

It would be interesting to inquire of Police Scotland the extent to which the condition of the roads has been a contributory factor in accidents that police have had to attend. Dipping back into my now long-distant past career in the retail motor industry, I recall that, as a large repairing operation, we did not routinely have to undertake repairs as a result of damage caused by potholes. To be fair, there were considerably fewer automobiles on the roads 30 years ago than there are today. Notwithstanding that, all of us can see a deterioration.

The word “pothole” can mean so many different things. It can mean just a little bit of rough texture on a road, which is messy, but it can also be quite a heavily disguised but large and fairly dangerous pothole, which, if the road is busy, people will often not have advance sight of until they find themselves in it. That needs to be taken far more seriously as it becomes a potentially more dangerous experience.

Are we agreed that we will write to the various organisations and keep the petition open?

Members indicated agreement.

Colleagues, are we content with Mr Stewart’s suggestion in relation to this petition?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 3 is the consideration of new petitions. As always, before I introduce the first of the new petitions, I say to petitioners who may be with us or watching our proceedings that we do a considerable amount of work in advance of our first consideration of petitions. Part of that work is getting an initial view from the Scottish Government. That does not necessarily determine the outcome or the actions that we might subsequently take—it is simply an initial view of the Scottish Government’s perspective on the petition. We also receive a briefing from the Parliament’s impartial research service, SPICe. Petitioners should know that that work is done in advance.

The first of the new petitions is PE1993, which has been lodged by David Grimm and Lucy Challoner. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that social work students have access to adequate financial support during their studies by providing bursaries to all third and fourth-year undergraduate social work students on work placements, reforming the assessment criteria and adequately funding the bursaries for postgraduate social work students on work placements.

By way of background information, the petitioners highlight that social work students spend nine months on placements during their third and fourth years but that, unlike, for example, student nurses and paramedics, there are no bursaries to support them.

In its initial response to the petition, the Scottish Government notes that the relevant minister met the petitioners and representatives of the Scottish Association of Social Work, the Social Workers Union and the British Association of Social Workers to discuss support for social work students—I might refer to the summary of that meeting later. The Scottish Government’s response also states that, while a preference for bursaries over loan payments is likely to be shared by most students, there should be recognition of the wider funding landscape and the pressures across the Scottish Government’s budget, and of the challenges that that brings to ensuring that the student support package is fair while maintaining the overall affordability of the student support system. The response also highlights that social work students have access to living-cost grants that are not available to nursing, paramedic and midwifery students.

We have also received a submission from the petitioners in response to the Scottish Government. In that submission, the petitioners highlight that the support that is available for social work students currently comes in the form of a repayable loan and depends on household income. That differs from the support available to nursing, midwifery and paramedic students, who are eligible for a bursary totalling £37,500 over four years. The petitioners tell us that, while undertaking work placements, social work students work just as hard as their colleagues who are on nursing, midwifery and paramedic courses. They recognise that social work students undertake placements only during their third and fourth years, while nursing and midwifery students do so throughout the entirety of their courses, which is why the petition calls for bursaries to be made available for those in the later stages of their study.

The petitioners call for a review of the funding and assessment criteria for postgraduate bursaries administered by the Scottish Social Services Council. As noted in the SPICe briefing, it has not been possible to locate details of that scheme on the SSSC’s website, but individual universities provide more details of the scheme.

I want to refer to one comment by the minister in the Scottish Government’s response that caught my eye:

“The points raised by the petitioners in their meeting with Mr Hepburn were captured and will be taken into consideration when progressing current work to review the support available. The Minister also expressed to the petitioners that he and his fellow Ministers would welcome maintaining an open line of communication on this matter.”

I was slightly entertained by the idea of things being “captured”. That expression does not necessarily indicate that there will be a subsequent course of action.

Do members have any comments?