Princess Royal at new village for veterans in Aylesford

It's part of the £22m development, which provides a range of homes, welfare support and a community for the country's most vulnerable veterans.

Transcript

00:00 Well, the weather might have been miserable today, but a joyous occasion here at the Centenary

00:07 Village in Ellesford. Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal was here to visit and open

00:14 a new home for veterans. The site has been here for more than 100 years, opening in 1919

00:22 to provide support for the sick and wounded. Her Royal Highness saw some of the new facilities

00:33 on offer and met the staff and the residents and the fundraisers who made this all possible.

00:40 We've fundraised £22 million since 2016 and it's for veterans, it's to build new facilities

00:47 for veterans, housing, apartments, supported living, but we're building a big community

00:53 centre with teaching rooms and gymnasium. Today the Royal even went into Rod and Veronica's

01:00 home. Rod served in the Royal Engineers for 18 years and Rod and the Royal Highness have

01:07 something in common. She asked me what lot I was with, I said the Engineers, I said with

01:14 the tanks. She looked at me and I was down in Paddedby driving the tank, which I knew

01:21 because I'd seen her down there. She said, who made me driving tanks and I used to drive

01:28 them, which she did once. Just jumped in the one and had a go. But after he left the service

01:36 he suffered 19 months of abuse from his neighbours. He says in that time Veronica lost a lot of

01:42 weight but now they say they've moved here and the life has turned around. There must

01:48 be thousands of people like us that need rescued and it's sad. We were two of the lucky ones.

02:03 We were very lucky. We were. Today you had Her Royal Highness in your front room. How

02:10 did that feel? That was magical. An absolute privilege. But to bear in mind that just over

02:19 a hundred years ago your predecessors came up with a remarkably good model. Quite often

02:26 people reinvent that particular wheel. What you've done is make this model work better

02:32 and better. Arguably it's a little sad that it is as unique as it appears to be and that

02:41 this model doesn't happen elsewhere. Her Royal Highness officially opened 24 new homes today

02:48 at Greenwich House. It's part of 40 new ones here but I'm told by the RBLI that even more

02:53 will be built in the not too distant future. Gabriel Morris for KMTV in Ellsford.