The problem was never the lack of regulations, they more than ensured that UK Military Airworthiness was fully functional and effective, provided they were implemented. And so they were, until the RAF equivalents of Pol Pot ordered that they be suborned, ie signed off as complied with but not implemented. Those trained and experienced engineers whose work it was to provide for airworthiness were now immediately faced with a moral dilemma, to defy what were clearly illegal orders or comply, with all that would entail. Those who complied ensured that there was an immediate break in the continuous process of audit that is the cornerstone of airworthiness. Without it even the most simple aircraft are rendered unairworthy and so the ACO gliders were grounded... sorry paused in consequence, albeit only eventually. Those who defied the order were hounded, persecuted, appealed, only then to have it confirmed by ministers that the orders were proper and that defying them was an offence. Eventually those square pegs were replaced by compliant inexperienced untrained non-engineers. The corporate knowledge was lost, the regulations pulped, and year zero heralded the infamous H-C Golden Period.
No amount of reinventing the wheel will avoid a repeat of this scandal happening again. You may well ask why RAF VSOs should want to subvert the airworthiness of their own aircraft. Of course, they did not. All they wanted was to release the historically ring fenced Air Safety monies to plug a gaping hole in the supply budgets, not caused by government cuts but by the ineptitude of RAF VSOs. The problem was not why but how, and it was all too easy as they outranked anyone who might seek to stop them, or reveal what had happened, or that certain resultant fatal accidents were airworthiness related. In short they did what they did because they could. Civilian Operators would no doubt do the same given half a chance, so they are denied it by having an independent regulator and investigator.
OMS, you ask what is to be done? I say do the same as the civilians. Nothing less than an independent regulator and investigator will suffice, lest history repeats itself (it oftimes does you know).