A spokesperson for the water company said it is fixing 20 per cent more leaks than normal, or the equivalent of one every 10 minutes.

The company has said the prolonged hot and dry weathers puts pressure on the water pipes, with dry ground putting strain on the pipes.

At the same time, the company has put the blame on customers as higher demand for water increased making bursts and leaks more likely.

The company also confirmed it has replaced 100km, out of 140,00km total, of water mains since April last year, their biggest upgrade in 150 years.

CEO Chris Weston defended the company’s pay levels, as his pay rose by 14% to £1.163 million in the year to March, while other directors received bonuses totalling £4.1 million. (Image: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA Wire)

Additionally, £500 million has been invested in finding and fixing leaks.

The company has just come under fire after CEO, Chris Weston, said on the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast, stated that some of the firm’s targets were beyond what they could achieve.

He said: “We have to hit a certain level of leakage, but it is so far in excess of what we are capable of doing, I think anyone would be capable of doing, however much money you invested, that it is not going to be achievable.”

Last year, it was fined a record £122.7 million by regulator Ofwat, largely for breaching sewage spill rules.

The company, serving 16 million customers in London and parts of southern England, treats 4.3 billion litres of waste daily.

Mr Weston, however, warned of the potential burden on taxpayers if this were to happen.

Instead, he backed a rescue deal proposed by the firm’s lenders.

Meanwhile, Mr Weston defended the company’s pay levels, as his pay rose by 14 per cent to £1.163 million in the year to March, while other directors received bonuses totalling £4.1 million.

Keepit has launched AI Truth Cloud, marking a broader push to position backup data as a trusted source for artificial intelligence systems.

The launch signals a new direction in how Keepit wants customers to use the copies of business data it stores outside production systems. Rather than treating backup mainly as a tool for compliance, recovery or ransomware response, Keepit is presenting it as a separate data layer that AI systems can verify, govern and use.

The platform is built around five pillars: Protect, Observe, Recover, Prove and Integrate. Keepit says they are intended to support a broader approach to data trust as organisations increasingly rely on AI agents and models in operational decision-making.

Three product areas are central to the initial rollout. AI Connector Backup is designed to protect AI-related assets such as agent configurations, skills, projects and models, with point-in-time restore. Keepit MCP is a headless API layer intended to connect Keepit-managed data to AI tools and workflows. AI Safe Room is an isolated environment based on an immutable copy of data for training, inference and testing away from live production systems.

Keepit says organisations should be able to verify the authenticity, provenance and integrity of data before it is used by an AI system. It also argues that a separate, immutable copy can serve as a recovery point if an AI tool, agent or model behaves unexpectedly.

Trust layer

Keepit is seeking to distinguish itself from AI vendors by stressing its role as an independent custodian of data copies across the applications it protects. Those copies are held in a vendor-independent cloud, which the company says gives customers a source of data outside the influence of third-party software providers.

The move comes as more software groups and infrastructure suppliers try to define their place in the AI stack. For backup and cyber recovery vendors, that increasingly means presenting stored data not just as insurance against outages or attacks, but as a controlled asset that can feed AI systems without exposing production environments.

Keepit plans further development across all five pillars, including AI agent behavioural monitoring, automated compliance evidence generation, cryptographic data provenance and AI-driven threat rollback. It did not provide launch timings for those features.

Alongside the product launch, Keepit is introducing an independent software vendor partnership strategy. The plan would allow software vendors to integrate Keepit’s approach to sovereignty, immutability and governance into their own products, extending the platform’s reach beyond direct customers.

Keepit also said it would continue broadening the range of applications and environments it supports as customers adopt more AI-driven and agentic workflows. The company argues that protecting the data AI tools create and consume will become a new area of demand for backup suppliers.

Frederik Schouboe, Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer at Keepit, said the product is designed to address a basic question: whether data used by AI can be trusted. “Organisations are making high-stakes decisions based on what their AI tells them. But data that can’t be verified shouldn’t be acted on. AI Truth Cloud gives enterprises an independent, tamper-proof, and provably complete data foundation – one that AI can safely reason from, one that organisations can prove the integrity of and roll back to a known-good state from when a decision goes wrong. Verifying the truth before you act, and recovering it when you didn’t. That is what it means to own the truth,” Schouboe said.

Customer demand

Keepit says some customers are already using its data foundation in AI-related workflows. Quanta Services echoed that message, linking verified and immutable data to greater confidence in AI use inside the business.

“Knowing that our AI is working from a verified, immutable source changes the conversation from risk management to competitive advantage. Keepit has become a foundational part of how we think about data integrity for AI,” said Tom Hicks, Senior Manager, Identity, Quanta Services.

Channel partners also pointed to demand from regulated sectors. Phoenix said public sector customers in particular are looking for ways to demonstrate that AI systems are used responsibly and can be audited.

“Our customers – especially in the public sector – are asking how they can use AI responsibly and demonstrate that to regulators. AI Truth Cloud changes that conversation from aspiration to practice. With an auditable, protected data layer built in, we can help organisations deploy AI at scale without compromising on governance or recoverability,” said Jonny Scott, Head of Cyber Advisory, Phoenix.

Keepit, which is headquartered in Copenhagen and says it serves more than 25,000 companies, has built its business around protecting software-as-a-service data in a cloud operated independently of the software vendors whose applications its customers use. The AI Truth Cloud launch extends that model into the growing debate over where reliable data for AI should sit and who should control it.

Staff at Santander and TSB are facing the job cuts are TSB was taken over by the Spanish-owned bank earlier this year.

A source from Santander told The Times that “there is going to be an impact on jobs” due to the £2.65 billion takeover deal.

There are currently around 23,000 people employed by Santander and TSB, however it’s not known how many of these jobs will be affected.

A spokeswoman for Santander told The Times they have not yet “made operational decisions on jobs”.

“However, we will ensure that our colleagues are informed of any changes at the appropriate time.”

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TSB (Image: Getty Images)

TSB has already announced it will make 130 people redundant following the acquisition.

A spokesperson for TSB said: “Whenever we make any changes to our business, the priority is to consult first with impacted colleagues to ensure they’re fully supported.”

The banks have also drawn attention for telling staff they need into the office three days a week from April 2027.

TSB did not previously require staff to work from the office for a set number of days.

There are Santander stores in Abingdon, Bicester, and Witney.

Meanwhile there are TSB branches in Witney and Wantage, the bank also operates a pop-up location in Chipping Norton.

Santander UK has pledged not to shut any more branches across its network and those of the recently-acquired rival TSB before 2028, despite the plans to cut costs further over the rest of the year.