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Frustrated tenants confronted council chief Richard Watts over the Town Hall’s decision to take control of the Bemerton estate’s tenants’ management organisation ­fol­lowing revelations that its chairman was a paedophile.

Islington Council stepped in after it emerged the Bemerton Villages Management Organisation (BVMO) failed to immediately disclose information about the arrest of chairman Geoffrey Gex, despite knowing about it for at least six weeks.

The Town Hall said the BVMO could not “be entrusted with its safeguarding responsibility” after the scandal, revealed by the Tribune, broke in August.

Gex, branded “dangerous” to teenage boys by a judge, chaired the tenant-led company contracted by the Town Hall to provide day-to-day housing management services on the estate. He was jailed for eight years for child sex offences on August 10.

The council is still locked in a legal battle with the BMVO over the dispute.

At a Question Time event at the Jean Stokes Community Centre on the estate on Monday, tenants vented their frustration at the Town Hall’s actions, calling it “undemocratic”.

“We democratically voted to be run as a co-op,” said one. “What is going on? The whole estate is suffering from the actions of a couple of individuals.”

Cllr Watts emphatically backed the council’s actions. “It’s a very difficult situation,” he said. “But the council had some very fundamental concerns about the way the BVMO was handling the safeguarding duties incumbent on them.

“The council did step in and say ‘there is a problem here and we have to act’.”

Cllr Watts said he appreciated there had been disruption and acknowledged that tenants voted to run their own affairs but stressed the council had done the right thing.

Tenants said they were being kept in the dark about what was happening, but tenants chairman John Bevin told them legal proceedings made it difficult to update people.

“There is a legal dispute between the board and the council,” he said. “We are trying to find a solution and I think we are getting closer to an agreement.”

Gex, an American-born IT consultant who lived in a flat in Earlsferry Way on the estate, downloaded child abuse images and tried to lure boys to London to be abused on gay adult websites.

He had spent five years in jail in the US for sexually abusing five boys aged between 11 and 14 while working as their baseball coach.

The BVMO board were aware of Gex’s arrest but waited until they saw details of his sentence online due to fears about “confidentiality”.

At the time they said they were “unaware of any term of the management agreement” which would have required them to tell the council of Gex’s arrest.

Cllr Watts said in August: “They completely misunderstand how to deal with safeguarding. The fact that information about Gex’s conviction was not in the public domain does not mean no kids could have been put at risk, and they were legally and morally bound to deal with it.”