For his efforts to encourage NHS trusts to source more local and sustainable food he was awarded an MBE in 2009. He was also named a Farmers’ Weekly ‘Food Miles Hero’ and won the Caroline Walker Trust Award.
He was a longstanding member of the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA), whose chair Craig Smith has paid tribute to Mike’s work in the sector: “The whole of the hospital catering community will be stunned to hear the news of Mike’s passing.
“The very first HCA meeting I attended was at Mike’s hospital and that was over 40 years ago. His passion for providing the patients with the best ingredients available became legendary and since his retirement his enthusiasm remained undimmed.
“He would constantly be questioning and holding people to account, calling for the reduction of the current reliance on prepared meals.
“During the recent Hospital Food Review he made sure that his comments were heard at the highest level. His contribution to our debates will be sorely missed and the Association’s condolences go out to Mike’s partner and family.”
Andy Jones chair PSC100 and a former HCA chair himself, added: “We have had the sad news that Mike Duckett as passed away. As we know, Mike had strong views on NHS catering, but his passion for freshly cooked food using local produce was at the fore. It is sad day for all NHS caterers losing such a champion.”
He attended Eton College as a schoolboy and went on to study catering management at the University of Bath, graduating in 1964 and starting his career as a chef working in a Taunton Hotel before embarking on a catering management path that took him into hospital patient nutrition.
He said his passion for good, local produce went back to his early days when the gardeners at the Brompton Sanatorium, as it was, would come to the back door and ask him what vegetables he wanted for meals that day.
“The gardeners did not use pesticides or artificial fertilisers, so I found himself, without really trying, taking delivery of organically grown vegetables with food miles that could be measured in yards,” he said in an interview with Cost Sector Catering magazine back in 2012.
He then moved out of healthcare to work for hotel and catering group GrandMet, did a stint working for the directors’ dining room at Barclays Bank headquarters, helped keep London Transport staff well fed and then did the same for postal workers at the Royal Mail.
He returned to hospital catering with Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, going on to become catering manager at King’s College Hospital in London before deciding to leave when the hospital tried to save money by switching its traditional cook-serve catering model for a delivered, frozen meals system.
At Royal Brompton, Duckett says he realized that with the food volumes he bought (50,000 eggs, 9,000kg sausages, 40,000kg of potatoes passed through its kitchens every year) he could buy better if he bypassed the NHS Supply Chain and went straight to farmers in the south east for fresh food.
As a result, patients at the Brompton and its sister hospital at Harefield, ate free range eggs from Kent, organic milk from Bedford, sausages to a bespoke recipe from north London and bacon from pig farmers in Essex and Hertfordshire. Each year orchards in Kent crushed enough apples and pears to supply him with 250,000l of pure juice.
He admitted that there was a cost implication to this buying, and his meals were more expensive that the NHS average, but said he always stayed within the budget set by the Brompton and Harefield Trust.
His work attracted a lot of interest from outside the hospital catering world, with Prince Charles citing Mike in an interview he once did on the subject of hospital food.
He said: “Back in 2004 I launched a pilot project – led by the Soil Association and Sustain, two environmental organisations – to increase the amount of fresh, local and , where possible, organic food being supplied to London hospitals. The Royal Brompton, and its catering manager Mike Duckett, became the leading example of best practice in hospital food.”