NATS used to charge £300+ for a subscription to the UKAIP and £20 or so for the AICs. They always maintained that this was the cost of distributing the bi-monthly updates etc. When CD-ROM technology came along they offered the option of having it on disc for around £70 PA. When they started their website they offered it at no cost to end users.
It must cost hundreds of thousands a year to keep the regular updates going. Does this come out of en-route nav charges (which most aviatiors don't pay) or do the CAA subsidise NATS to produce this as a part of our ICAO obligation (in which case, I guess we do pay through the money that the CAA extract from GA).
By the way, I know the history of how NATS wound up looking after the UKAIP, AICs etc but isn't it about time that our public/private financed Air Traffic provider gave this task back where it belongs, to the CAA? What about NOTAM, should this be a CAA task as well? At least the CAA's website works better than NATS, the latter's a nightmare in my view!
Personally, I keep all the key CAA and NATS documents as .pdf in folders on my PC, so that I can access them any time I like. I look at hte relevant websites every now and again, just to make sure I've got the up-to-date version.
Cheers,
TheOddOne