Royal honour for data man who kept 450,000 people fed
AWHITWORTH man has been recognised in the New Year’s Honours for his contribution during the pandemic.
Ricky Sercombe MBE, 47, from Hallfold Road, Whitworth, works for Brakes wholefood supplier, who were instrumental in preparing food boxes to those self-isolating when the pandemic broke out in March.
Ricky, a Data Technologist, helped plan out deliveries to the 450,000 vulnerable people who needed food supplies, which due to the reporting differences between NHS institutions, identifying the individuals, and tracking down individuals with incorrect addresses, was an extremely difficult task.
Hundreds of thousands of lines of report data came from central Government each day, which Ricky, through his resilience and dedication, was able to manually create a workable delivery schedule, going many hours above his contracted hours.
He achieved this by going the extra mile and spending many hours beyond his contracted hours to clean data, identify duplicate files and extract individuals’ names and addresses.
Ricky was personally responsible for the successful delivery of hundreds of thousands of parcels a week. The boxes have been described by recipients as a lifeline.
Dad-of-one, Ricky, said: “I work for a national food distributor that delivers food to hospitals and schools.
“There were about 24 items of food per box for a week, referred by GPs, government websites, or various other ways.
“We set up a link to get the data sent to us.
“There were 30,000 boxes to deliver in the first week which increased to 450,000 per week.
“It was rather challenging because people had registered on the website and not put their full address in - it was a real challenge and a lot of work to find out where people were.
“We delivered over a 16 week period.
“It grew until the middle of June then it started to decrease.”
Ricky added that Wales, Scotland and England all had different methods.
He said: “We were desperate to get this data right.
“It was absolutely amazing and I was flabbergasted when I made the New Year’s Honours.
“I was overwhelmed and in shock.
“What I did wasn’t my normal job - I do work in IT for Brakes.
“I am just one part of what was achieved - I am proud but I am also very proud of my colleges there’s so many I could mention.”
Ricky was also helped by son, Jake, nine, who would help him to look up addresses that weren’t totally filled in.
Working alongside was second wholesale company, Bidfood - both Brakes and Bidfood distribution centres worked to supply the country with food boxes during lockdown.
“I am just one part of what was achieved – I am proud”