by Andrew Hitchon

OLDER people are not the technophobes they are sometimes painted, the Princess Royal told a conference in York today.

And the Princess insisted that new technology could be a major factor in helping to improve services for older people in rural communities.

The Princess was speaking at a conference of the Rural Housing Trust, of which she is president, on Growing Older In The Countryside.

She told delegates at the event at York Racecourse about "the influence of new technology on village life, and how it can be made to work for the whole of the community, no matter what their age group."

She rejected the idea that older people could not cope with new technology, saying the Citizens' Advice Bureau had been worried that its older volunteers would not be able to use computers.

"They couldn't have been more wrong because these more senior volunteers, because they have a bit of time to spare and because they can see the value of what computers can do in terms of advice work and monitoring the information services, they learned to do things with those computers and programmes that even the experts hadn't thought of," the Princess said.

Les Bright, deputy chief executive of Counsel And Care, had earlier warned that elderly people needed to get out and have contact with people to avoid problems like depression.

Closing the session, the Princess said today's event was about bringing together services for the elderly, and technology was part of that. "It's not a cure for the users but it does apply a greater choice to what they can do and indeed, what they can see is available for them to do.

"Isolation for the elderly is a problem for them wherever they are, but in villages it is probably slightly greater."

When the Princess arrived at the racecourse she was presented by North Yorkshire's Deputy Lord Lieutenant, Col Eddie York, to the county's High Sheriff, Andrew Hudson, the Lord Mayor of York, Coun Peter Vaughan and his wife, Coun June Vaughan, the Sheriff of York, Coun Harry Briggs and his Lady, Coun Madeleine Kirk, York police chief Gary Barnett, and John Smith, manager and clerk of the course.

She was then introduced by Rural Housing Trust chief executive Moria Constable to two of its area programme managers, Ann Tomlinson and Chris Moor.

Later the Princess was due to visit York University's biology department, which recently received a £20 million award for a major redevelopment of its research facilities.