"All the rule book achieves is to turn the preparation of an audited set of accounts into a compliance operation," he adds.Some would suggest that that has already happened. Spectacular corporate collapses may be becoming less frequent but they still figure large in the minds of auditors. So it is hardly surprising that the profession has sought to blank out the nightmares by tightening the rules concerning the way i t carries out its duties. But most bodies have inadequate mechanisms for feeding the lessons from complaints back into the regulatory process, although there is a trend for compulsory post-qualification training.Multidisciplinary co-operation is becoming more common; only solicitors and barristers are now unable to form UK-based multidisciplinary partnerships.The study was conducted by Janet Allaker and Professor Joanna Shapland of the Institute for the Study of the Legal Profession at the University of Sheffield..

A greater number of complaints are heard, especially of poor service. Outside regulation is increasingly limiting professional bodies' freedom of action.The most underdeveloped area in many professions is services to clients; little contact exists between professional bodies and potential clients of their members. The research found that professions are dealing with demands from the public for higher standards of service. These usually lead to further regulations, and the risk of alienating the membership. All professional bodies face conflicting pressures to regulate and represent their members, according to research by the Law Society. The study - which also looked at other fields, including accountancy, general medical practice, architecture, de ntistry, social work and psychology - was carried out in order to inform the society about developments in other professions and to help it learn from the way other professional bodies carry out their functions.

Yet, the fate of Scotland's finest modern building - empty this Christmas - is surely a matter of national concern, and national shame.The writer is a lecturer at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow.The first "Mac Journal", devoted to the works of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, is available from the Mackintosh School of Architecture, 177 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G3 6RQ, price £10.. This, it must be said, is not another of Glasgow's problems for 1999 as Cardross is the responsibility of Dumbarton district council. The archdiocese would like part of the site to be developed with new housing to enable the seminary buildings to be restored, but the land is designated Green Belt and the local authority is opposed to the idea So stalemate results and the vandalism continues. Historic Scotland has now announced the listing of 14 more churches by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, but this does not help Cardross. Nevetherless, a small number of people continue to maintain that St Peter's, Cardross, represents a remarkable achievement and that, along with, say, Thomson's StVincent Street Church and Mackintosh's School of Art, it is one of the truly great monuments of Scottish architecture.Even now, with goodwill and imagination, those much abused yet still powerful concrete forms could be repaired and put to good use. The other route is to cult ivate a local and highly sophisticated expression of an international style. This is what Adam, Burnet and Thomson did with the Classical language in the 18th and 19th centuries and what Gillespie, Kidd & Coia succeeded in achieving at Cardross in our ow n century.Recognition of the quality of Glasgow's modern Roman Catholic churches has come, although only three years, as reported on this page, St Benedict's in Drumchapel was suddenly demolished in advance of imminent listing.

One is to seek to create a mo dern architecture from deeply rooted local traditions. How can this be revived? It see m s to me that there are two possible architectural paradigms for a small nation seeking to establish (or re-establish) its own identity, one followed in the Scandinavian nations to which Scotland should be looking for a lead. As for the Royal Concert Hall, opened in the Year of Culture 1990, most visitors assume it was built in the Thirties, while the more aware recognise it as Stalinist stripped-classical of the Fifties.What makes this all so sad is that Scotland once had one of the most interesting architectural cultures in Europe, producing a remarkable number of the greatest British architects, out of all proportion to her population. Yes, there are good firms working such as Page & Park and Elder & Cannon, but the big jobs go to second-rate firms producing feeble imitations of the National Gallery extension school of American Post-modernism (and that is bad enough) while Glasgow's high rise disasters are being replaced by too much twee, trivial building of orange, yellow or red brick, wholly inappropriate in a city that was once all stone. But tears are also to be shed because nothing worthy has risen to replace this vigorous local expression of the Modern movement.I dread being asked by visitors what modern buildings are worth seeing in Glasgow, for it is not comfortable to have to be negative.

It was a heroic story that ended in tears, both because the firm has ceased to exist and because the archdiocese is saddled with huge maintenance bills. The remarkable post-war buildings by this firm were not the unaided efforts of Jack Coia himself, but largely the work of Isi Metztstein and Andy MacMillan, who were dazzled by Le Corbusier and who experimented in the plans and forms of churches up to and beyond the capabilities of Glasgow contractors. This, along with the refectory, were planned as a continuous long space with the accommodation stacked above as a sort of open pyramid, so that seminarians could look down and feel part of the community. To see so clever and powerful a design - as well as so much intelligent built capital - thus maltreated seems incomprehensible .Now it is well known that there were functional problems at Cardross, as with many of the churches designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. The high quality joinery has been stripped out, but the sculptural forms of reinforced concrete stand firm. The long, low lines of the college buildings are offset by the silo-like forms of the side chapels, standing upright like sentinels, while light still flooded into the remarkable chapel. When Historic Scotland decided to list the whole complex as CategoryA in 1992 (the equivalent of Grade 1 south of the border), both the modern seminary and Burnet's innocent Victorian house had been systematically vandalised and were little better than ruins.This obscene, sacrilegious vandalism has continued, yet the brilliance of the architects' conception still shines.