The chief executive officer of the water company involved in a major supply issue in Kent should not resign as issues in the industry go “far wider than individual people”, a director has said.

South East Water (SEW) has issued a “boil water notice” for 24,000 homes in and around Tunbridge Wells who have experienced a loss of water or low pressure since November 29.

On Wednesday the company said the “water quality issues” which caused the initial shutdown had returned.

They have decided to continue pumping water so that people can flush their toilets and shower, but the water cannot be drunk without being boiled first.

Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin told the BBC earlier this week that it had been “a total failure of leadership” and called for the chief executive of SEW, Dave Hinton, to resign.

Douglas Whitfield, SEW water supply director, said resignation demands “fundamentally misunderstand the challenges that we’ve been facing in this incident as a company over the last few years, as an industry going forward, I don’t think that’s helpful”.

He told BBC Radio Kent: “I would point you to the independent Water Commission that sets out the challenges the water industry are facing and the changes it needs to make.

“They’re far wider than individual company and individual people.”

Mr Whitfield apologised to customers and said the precautionary boil notice was in place for 10 days because “public health is our key priority”.

But he said he was unable to guarantee the problem ensuring water quality would be solved within the 10 days as he was unable to provide a “definitive answer” as to why the water was not responding to normal treatment.

He said: “For the last 24 hours, the treatment process has actually been operating within all of the water quality parameters.

“Until we’re confident that we’ve resolved the issue and that it won’t reoccur, we’ll be working to keep that boil notice in place, until we are confident we can take it off.

“I can confirm all the water we supplied up to the point we put the boil notice on fully complied with all the regulations.”

Mr Whitfield apologised for “overly optimistic” messages put out to customers since the problem started but said this was “one of the most complex events that we’ve ever had”.

He added: “I can only apologise to the customers for the last week and the communications that we gave during the incident were on what we thought was going to happen at the time.

“The incident has changed from what we thought was happening at the weekend to a much longer, much more complicated issue that we’re trying to resolve.”

The Consumer Council for Water (CCW), an independent body representing water consumers across England and Wales, has called for a thorough investigation into the incident.

India’s power distribution companies need to move faster towards intelligent, reliable and consumer-focused networks, with technology adoption paired with greater consumer engagement, Power Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Sunday.Addressing a two-day National Conference on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the power distribution sector at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, Khattar urged DISCOMs to work closely with ecosystem stakeholders to accelerate the transition to smart distribution systems, according to ANI.The minister said active engagement with consumers was critical, stressing the need to address misinformation around new technologies and secure public support for their adoption. He also lauded the participation of industry, states, innovators, academia and technology partners at the conference.Khattar appreciated the AI and ML-based solutions showcased by distribution companies, advanced metering infrastructure service providers, technology solution providers and home automation solution providers, noting their potential to transform both consumer experience and operational efficiency.He highlighted applications such as smart meter analytics, digital twins, predictive maintenance, theft detection intelligence, appliance-level consumer insights, automated outage prediction and GenAI-based decision support as key enablers of intelligent, self-optimising and consumer-centric distribution networks.According to the minister, AI and ML solutions can restore consumer trust, help households manage consumption, prevent outages, protect honest consumers from theft-related costs, and enable DISCOMs to reduce losses, optimise power purchase costs and reinvest in infrastructure—positioning India as a global leader in digital electricity reform and future-ready grid governance.Speaking at the conference, Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said the ministry remained committed to deepening digitalisation across DISCOMs and promoting AI and ML adoption that delivers measurable operational and financial gains.Agarwal stressed the importance of capacity building, secure data-sharing frameworks and interoperability to ensure solutions demonstrated at the conference can be scaled nationwide to support India’s energy transition.

Aadhaar-based verification is set to move further away from paper trails, with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) preparing to notify a new rule mandating registration of entities that seek offline Aadhaar verification, reported PTIThe proposed rule aims to discourage practices such as hotels, event organisers and similar entities collecting photocopies of Aadhaar cards and storing them physically — a process that is already in contravention of the Aadhaar Act, a senior government official told PTI.UIDAI chief executive officer Bhuvnesh Kumar said the authority has approved a framework under which entities seeking offline Aadhaar verification will be required to register. Once registered, they will gain access to new technology tools that allow verification through QR code scanning or via a new Aadhaar app currently under development.“The new rule has been approved by the authority and will be notified soon. It will mandate registration of offline verification-seeking entities like hotels, event organisers. The objective is to discourage paper-based Aadhaar verification,” Kumar said.He said the move will also address operational issues caused by downtime of intermediary servers that connect entities to the central Aadhaar database. Under the revised system, registered entities will be provided access to application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate offline Aadhaar verification into their systems.UIDAI is also beta-testing a new app that will enable app-to-app Aadhaar verification without requiring connection to the central Aadhaar database for each transaction. The app is expected to be used in places such as airports and retail outlets selling age-restricted products.“The ease of verification will enhance offline verification without the use of paper while maintaining privacy of users or any risk of their Aadhaar data getting leaked for misuse,” Kumar said.According to him, the app is expected to fine-tune Aadhaar authentication services in line with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which is slated to become fully operational within the next 18 months.The app will also allow users to update address proof documents and add family members to the same platform, including those who do not own a mobile phone, he added.