The civil war raging in SW9

“This is the closest I’ve ever come to being a special forces commander.” 

I’m currently sitting in the “command centre” with Oliver Chapman, a wiry 33-year-old special education teacher with short black hair, a gold chain and an effortless smile. Chapman has spent 15 hours prepping for this. He even has a two page strategy document open in front of him, a step-by-step guide with contingency plans for every possible outcome. His mission is simple: to find a way to get wave after wave of his commandos, sporting fake names and disguised identities, into a highly-guarded meeting. From there, they might be able to change the future.

The command centre in question, I should make clear, is a cramped closet-turned-office filled with Chapman’s synthesisers and guitars. The meeting is a Zoom call for the AGM for a tenant management organisation, and the strategy is four different screens, desperately trying to log in.

You might, quite fairly, be wondering what could be worth this storming of the Normandy beaches-style military operation. Well, the flat I’m currently sitting in is on the Loughborough Estate, one of south London’s biggest council estates and home to a very active and bizarre civil war between tenants and the Loughborough Estate Management Board (LEMB), the tenant’s management organisation that is supposed to use millions of pounds of council and resident’s money to look after the estate. It’s a group that for Chapman, and hundreds of other residents, has become the bane of their existence, and this meeting may be their only chance to get rid of them.

Any resident who wants to attend an AGM like this one should be allowed to, but as anyone who has read any of our past coverage on the estate will know, what should happen means less than nothing in this tiny patch of south London. For the last 20 minutes, the mood has been glum. The mission is failing, as no-one can seem to make it into the Zoom itself —  the members of LEMB, it seems, are blanket rejecting any tenants who try to join. Until a voice echoes from downstairs.

It’s Nina de Paula Hanika — Chapman’s flatmate, a 32-year-old communications manager sporting a graphic tee and dark blonde hair — and she’s managed to sneak through the defences using a fake name. Almost giddy with excitement, we crowd onto their teal sofa in front of the laptop.

Little did I know that over the course of the next hour, I would be witness to one of the strangest experiences I’ve had while working at The Londoner; my very own chaotic Handforth parish council meeting. Except this time instead of the fate of a village hall, the future of one of the capital’s biggest estates was on the line.