After the storm that was the discovery of the BBC reporting the collapse of WTC7 up to 40 minutes before the actual event, the BBC claimed that the recordings of the newscast were "lost".
This was a damage limitation excercise and an attempt to buy some time for the whole scandal to blow over, it didn't work.
The BBC is a corporation funded by the British people hence any data including recordings are the property of the license fee payers of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
To withold this data from its legal owners (license fee payers) is an offence under the data protection act.
When a FOIA request for the recordings was made the BBC confirmed the loss of the recordings and used this as an excuse to deny the disclosure of said information, however the individual making the request contacted the information commissioner to complain that the BBC had lost the recordings and was therefore liable to be prosecuted under the data protection act and barred from holding data (this would be catastrophic for such a large corporation).
Strange as it may seem the information commissioner has been satisfied that the recordings are not indeed lost, but have been made subject of a 'D' notice in order to repel any further FOIA requests.
The BBC now needs to be swamped with requests for disclosure of these recordings and the denial letters posted online as they can no longer use the 'lost' excuse.
I would urge all UK citizens to make a FOIA request for the footage and report all denials to the information commissioner http://www.ico.gov.uk/.
After all the ICO has investigated this and is satisfied that the information has not been lost.