(1)Each commission area shall be the district of a district court, and the places at which a district court sits and, subject to section 8 of this Act, the days and times when it sits at any given place, shall be determined by the local authority; and in determining where and when a district court should sit, the local authority shall have regard to the desirability of minimising the expense and inconvenience occasioned to those directly involved, whether as parties or witnesses, in the proceedings before the court.
(2)The jurisdiction and powers of the district court shall be exercisable by a stipendiary magistrate or by one or more justices, and no decision of the court shall be questioned on the ground that it was not constituted as required by this subsection unless objection was taken on that ground by or on behalf of a party to the proceedings not later than the time when the proceedings or the alleged irregularity began.
(3)All prosecutions in a commission area shall proceed at the instance of the procurator fiscal.
(4)The procurator fiscal for an area which includes a commission area shall have all the powers and privileges conferred on a district prosecutor by section 6 of the M1District Courts (Scotland) Act 1975.
(5)The prosecutions authorised by the said Act of 1975 under complaint by the procurator fiscal shall be without prejudice to complaints at the instance of any other person entitled to make the same.
(6)In this section—
“commission area” means the area of a local authority;
“justice” means a justice of the peace appointed or deemed to have been appointed under section 9 of the said Act of 1975; and
“local authority” means a council constituted under section 2 of the M2Local Government (Scotland) Act 1994.