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Yes, absolutely. I will bring in my colleague Kersti Berge to talk about the work of Home Energy Scotland and other organisations. I have talked about the complexity of the heat in buildings work. Overcoming the substantial gap that exists between what we know needs to be done on paper and the public’s expectations is one strand of that complexity. The regulatory review group stressed that point, as did the Existing Homes Alliance and, if I remember correctly, it came up in the committee’s discussion with the Auditor General. There is a gap and it has to be plugged now in advance of work being done. There will have to be mechanisms for home owners to access advice on what is right for them and their building type, as well as advice on affordability and any green finance products that may or may not be available to them. We are currently building up that advice.

On the point about funding, we are still working with annualised budgets—which are very stretched—and, as you know from various discussions, that makes it more difficult for us to provide certainty. What we can do, however, is provide policy certainty. I mentioned earlier the commitment of aiming for £20 million over the current parliamentary session. I cannot confirm more than that when we have an annualised budget, but the policy objective is there, and I hope that that provides some certainty.

I sympathise entirely with the people’s panel’s comments on that aspect. I often find myself wading through hundreds of pages of policy documentation and wishing that it could be more succinct, with more brevity. The Government has to challenge itself in that regard. I have talked about that a little in relation to our green industrial strategy, for example; I have asked for that to foreground the need for brevity and conciseness.

Sometimes the issues are deeply complicated, and if we are too brief, we are accused of failing to consider certain issues that are not covered in a document. However, that brings us back to the importance of community-led action, whether it involves working with the climate hubs—I recently visited the North East Scotland Climate Action Network Hub in Aberdeen—or with our climate cafes, one of which I recently visited in Dunkeld and Birnam. Those trusted and dedicated local advocates are capable of taking the complex policy documents that Governments have to produce and distilling them in a way that is appropriate for their communities. They do a fantastic job in that regard; I am pleased that we are able to support them, and I want to continue doing so.

I am sorry, Ms Dunbar—is that in respect of the national performance framework?

I, too, remember when I first came across the LULUCF acronym, Mr Doris.

It very much is a joint endeavour. In fact, although the UK’s pathway to net zero is contingent on a number of things, it includes Scotland meeting its forestry objectives, which underlines how much more difficult the matter is made when capital budgets that are critical for forestation are cut when they come to Scotland.

I work with UK Government ministers and ministers in the other nations of the UK through a number of forums, not least the interministerial group for net zero, in which we take the opportunity to raise policy and budgetary matters. I assure the committee that the Scottish ministers—certainly, Gillian Martin and I, in respect of climate change—will take every opportunity to raise with the UK Government the need not only for policy progress in certain areas, but for good joint working and for budgetary priority to be given to climate interventions.

I cannot confirm that today, Ms Lennon, not simply because of the advice that I am awaiting on future plans, but, more substantively, because of the complexity of the issue and the extent to which it is caught up in the Scottish human rights bill and the right to a healthy environment. Both those factors mean that I cannot confirm today when that report will be published. However, I can confirm that the responses to it and the evidence that the committee has taken are being closely taken into account.

I come back to my general point. The Government’s view, having undertaken a review under the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, is that the current balance is serving access to justice well in Scotland.

On the specific point about Aarhus, I think that there were comments about the expense of accessing judicial review, in particular. In our report, we set out a series of pieces of on-going work that are intended to aid access to justice. That includes, as a core part, the right to a healthy environment and the development of that, which we have discussed previously. There is also the review of protective expenses orders, and the introduction in July 2022—I understand—of a exemption from court fees for Aarhus cases. In addition, there are matters relating to legal aid, which are not explicitly within my remit, but fall within the remit of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice.

We considered the question of compliance as part of our report, which is clear on the actions that are currently being taken in order to aid access to justice, because I understand that judicial review, while it is a very important means of accessing justice, is expensive.

Our assessment of the situation is that there are bits of on-going work that will aid access to justice. One of those is the right to a healthy environment as part of a human rights bill. We have to take that work forward and allow it to conclude, and allow the Parliament to be part of that process. In the Government’s view, that will aid access to justice, which is a very important issue.

Convener, I did not say that the energy strategy could not be released because we are in a pre-election period. The whole tenor of my description of my position today is that I am awaiting advice on what can and cannot be said in a pre-election period.

In my comments on the energy strategy, I said that it was not linked to a delay in the climate change plan, and it was, therefore, nearing completion and will be published in due course.

Thank you, deputy convener. I will make a general point and then a specific one on consenting.

First, I consider the energy transition to be the single greatest socioeconomic opportunity that Scotland has faced in many years. It is the job of us all to make sure that things are aligned so that we can seize the opportunity in a way that benefits our economy and our people. Although the Government has much to do in all that, it can be boiled down to creating policy certainty. Our energy strategy will seek to do that, not least by setting capacity targets for each of the renewable sectors that Scotland can deploy.

The second part is having a stable and predictable regulatory regime, which is where planning and consenting come in.

The final thing that we can do is to use scarce public money well and prudently to go where the market might not go, for example, or to help to leverage in private funding.

On your specific point on planning and consenting, which is extremely important, I am reviewing the Government’s performance in that respect on an on-going basis. If we take offshore wind as an example, we are doing well: we are pioneering in not just the technology itself but the scale of what we are seeking to consent in the coming years. That is the case with ScotWind on its own, even before we consider INTOG—innovation and targeted oil and gas. I am sorry to use acronyms. My colleagues from offshore wind will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the average time for the consenting of projects is 11 months for our part in the process. If I am correct, we have consented a number of projects. Perhaps Annabel Turpie can elaborate on that a little bit.

Marine consenting is just one part of the process, from option agreement through planning, consenting, contract for difference, operationalisation and so on. One of the biggest constraints in all that is grid connection. Although we will continually seek to improve what we are doing, and we are challenging ourselves to get the average time down, we currently see marine consents going through at an average of 11 months, whereas developers are getting grid connection dates in the mid-2030s. That underlines the importance of cross-UK working on the long-overdue upgrades of the electricity grid. I will hand over to Annabel Turpie to say a bit more on performance to date.