Britain's spy headquarters for listening in on signals around the world was severely disrupted by last year's floods that inundated large parts of England, lawmakers said in a report Tuesday.
The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, which oversees the work of Britain's domestic and intelligence services, said there were "unprecedented problems" at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Staff at the agency — which works on counter-terrorism, military and other security operations — managed to keep their most important operations running but feared their work could have been hit even more had the flooding got worse.
"We are very concerned that, had the flooding continued for very much longer or been more severe, GCHQ's operations could have been even more severely disrupted," the committee said in its annual report for 2006-7 to parliament.
The committee said that as a result it was reviewing contingency plans for all intelligence agencies — GCHQ, the domestic security service MI5 and its overseas counterpart MI6.
GCHQ is based near the city of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, western England, which was the worst hit county by flooding last June and July. At the time, officials played down the impact of the rising waters.
The site is powered by an electricity sub-station which came within inches (centimetres) of flooding, but officials said it would have been able to continue using back-up generators.
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were inundated in what weather forecasters said was one of the wettest months since records began. The total damage was estimated into the billions of pounds (euros, dollars).
