Dunfermline is one of four sheriff courts being added as High Court venues, along with Airdrie, Edinburgh and Glasgow. They will sit alongside the existing High Court centres in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Kilmarnock, Livingston, Paisley and Stirling. Court bosses say the move will help cut waiting times for trials and make it easier for people to attend cases closer to where they live, instead of always travelling to Glasgow or Edinburgh. The expansion means the High Court will be able to run up to 26 trials a day, compared with 16 at the start of this decade, with an extra preliminary hearings court scheduled to open in Glasgow this October. Lord Justice General Lord Pentland said the High Court was facing “intense pressure on a system with finite capacity” because of rising numbers of serious cases.