Former volunteers, who mostly asked to remain anonymous, say concerns about Joell-Deshields’ leadership pre-date the recent legal action by several years.<\/p>\n
Asked to sum up their concerns, one told us: “It just felt like the community was pushed to the side and it shifted into a commercial venture to inflate the egos of those in charge.”<\/p>\n
Some volunteers said his appointment raised “red flags” from the outset, as his job was not advertised externally.<\/p>\n
He became the only remaining PIL board member in 2021, when all other board members and community advisers resigned following allegations of institutional racism.<\/p>\n
Former volunteer manager Simon Taverner told us “it didn’t feel right” that Joell-Deshields “emerged from the wreckage of mass resignations to be the last person standing”.<\/p>\n
After taking over the organisation, Joell-Deshields led a restructure which saw him go from an unpaid volunteer chair to a chief executive paid more than \u00a380,000 a year, making him the first paid leader in the organisation’s history – and its first ever CEO.<\/p>\n
Insiders have told the BBC they questioned the transparency of the decision, which was decided by Joell-Deshields and three other directors without the job being advertised.<\/p>\n
Some say they were uncomfortable with the timing of the announcement. It came just weeks after Pride in London received a \u00a3625,000 grant from the GLA to help deliver events between 2023 and 2027.<\/p>\n
Within weeks of the grant being signed off, two other director roles were advertised with a \u00a360,000 salary, plus a 10% performance-related bonus. One of those two directors was Paisis, who is now PIL’s interim CEO.<\/p>\n
Following the restructure, PIL was spending more than \u00a3200,000 a year on its CEO and two directors. That “didn’t sit well” with Rob Millwood, former deputy director of operations.<\/p>\n
“Traditionally, if nobody was taking a salary, that amount would’ve been able to pay for the majority of the parade to take place,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Pride in London told the BBC that the GLA is aware that the size and scale of the event “requires a small number of full-time employed roles, alongside 120 core-team volunteers.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said the funding was “subject to the GLA’s rigorous due diligence processes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former volunteers, who mostly asked to remain anonymous, say concerns about Joell-Deshields’ leadership pre-date the recent legal action…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-547980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}