It was never my intention for anyone to compromise themselves and fall foul of any copyright issues. if john's answer was, yes, i have considered it but there are copyright issues, i would have said, oh, of course that may be an issue. in fact, one of the early replies to my question had content to this effect.
the service i've had from the national archives has been exceptional and thanks to them, i have found out information about my grandfather that he never divulged to me (he died when i was 16) or even my late father (he died when i was 19).
i suppose i'm looking at this subjectively. i believe that because it was my grandfather who wrote his report, then i should be able to make it available to whoever i want to.
last year (in fact 65 years to the day), i visited all the locations mentioned in Operation Pistol that my Grandfather had detailed in his report. I have edited all the video and was intending uploading it to youtube. i'm now concerned that because it contains video image of the documents i obtained from the national archives, i may be in breach of copyright.
in summary, i believe that the national archives should continue to charge the fees they do (they are very reasonable) but they should also consider making any scans that they have done, available for the public to view. not for free, but charge a small fee. can you imagine that if 100 different people were to ask for the same document, what the physical damage would be, every time the document was retrieved, unbanded, scanned, rebanded and restored?