In January, we pulled off the pettiest stunt in UK media, vowing to republish 'Men Premium' journalism produced by Local Democracy Reporters (LDRs) for free.
Back then, the MEN had not long launched their ‘Premium’ service — a £4.99-a-month subscription that gets you content made “exclusively for [their] subscribers”. We see no problem with this; we've long argued the case for subscriber-funded journalism. The issue, however, was that a significant number of these articles were actually written by LDRs, which is public-interest journalism funded by our TV license fees (i.e. funded by all of us), and available to all local newspapers for free — including The Mill.
Since then we’ve only caught the MEN at it once, until yesterday that is, when they published a piece on local councillor Kamran Ghafoor's housing portfolio, following the dramatic collapse of a building he owns on King Street. But don't worry, no need to part with your hard-earned cash. You can read it below.
An investigation into councillor Ghafoor's housing portfolio
by LDR reporter Charlotte Hall
The cracks in the wall seemed to be getting worse.
In the weeks leading up to the dramatic collapse of a house on King Street, Oldham, locals called emergency services out of concern for the state of the building. And then it came down.
An avalanche of bricks, roof tiles, and the entire contents of a rented out apartment came crashing onto the street, caving into the Euro King Mini Market below and crushing a bus stop on the pavement outside.
Dashcam footage showed cars swerving out of the way of falling debris, which also narrowly missed passengers who’d alighted onto their bus just moments before, and pedestrians sprinting away from the wreckage.
Five people were hurt in the collapse, more than 40 were displaced by an ensuing gas leak evacuation, and the whole street remains cordoned off as demolition works progress.
But three weeks on from the incident, several questions remain unanswered: What caused the collapse? Could it have been avoided? And who is to blame?
Generally, it’s the landlord who is responsible for maintaining the structure of the properties they own as per UK property law. In this case, the landlord is a company – KKS investors, a firm owned by local landlording duo Sameer Zulqurnain and Kamran Ghafoor, who is also a prominent independent councillor in the area.
Coun Ghafoor has denied any failure on behalf of the company, stating KKS Investors has ‘acted responsibly at all times, following all appropriate rules, regulation, and safety procedures’.
He’s suggested the windy weather on the days before the collapse played a part in bringing down the external wall.
But on the streets, on social media, and in the council chambers, allegations of ‘rogue’ and ‘slum’ landlording have circulated for years – epithets coun Ghafoor strongly rejects – while his investment in several houses of multiple occupation have earned him the title ‘HMO King’ on Facebook and among his peers.
Coun Ghafoor says he ‘doesn’t have day-to-day dealings with his tenants’ and ‘rejects the characterisation of his companies’ wider housing portfolio.
“He does seem to own about half of the town centre,” one council contact noted, slightly tongue-in-cheek. “So it’s obviously quite a serious concern.”
There are 10 addresses listed on coun Ghafoor’s Register of Interest – a document that requires councillors to disclose any assets or organizations they benefit from. But his total asset portfolio shared with his business partner Zulqurnain in Oldham could exceed £2m.
Most of these are held under three different property and investment companies. Coun Ghafoor is the sole director of KKI Investments and co-director of KKS Investments and KSGZ Holdings. According to Companies House, these firms collectively held around £1.7m worth of land and property assets last year. These include further homes on King Street, one on Fairbottom St, Cafe East on Yorkshire St, and Mo’s Takeaway shop on Church Lane.
Having a large property portfolio is not particularly unusual. Yet coun Ghafoor does have an undeniable history of complaints and action taken against him.
In May last year, 24 vulnerable people - including eight kids - were forced to move out of housing on King Street belonging to the councillor. Water was coming through the roof and ceilings, and at one stage fire crews were called after smoke started coming out of a light fitting.
Coun Ghafoor’s company had been receiving £7,000 a month through a council contract to provide temporary accommodation to families facing homelessness. The contract was signed in 2020, before Coun Ghafoor returned to the council as an independent councillor in 2023, and the total contract amounted to around £380,000 over five years. The council has since ‘made an effort not to house vulnerable individuals at coun Ghafoor’s properties’. Though due to the complicated and opaque nature of the temporary accommodation system, they said they ‘couldn’t be 100 per cent sure’ his homes weren’t being used through third-party providers.
Further back, in 2013, coun Ghafoor was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay £1,068 after renting out a private flat that was 'unfit to live in'. Town hall inspectors found he’d ignored numerous written warnings to fix smashed electrical sockets, broken central heating, faulty control dials on a gas fire and cooker, and unsecured doors and windows.
Coun Ghafoor later said money problems had prevented him from carrying out the work.
Most landlords carry out their business without ever receiving a fine. Of the 2.8m estimated number of private landlords in the UK, only 640 were prosecuted and 4,702 handed civil penalty notices last year, according to Home Office data.
This is partly due to enforcement teams at councils being steadily gutted by austerity cuts: local authorities across the UK actually received 300,000 complaints from tenants in total, meaning just 0.2pc of complaints end in prosecution. However, it also means councils tend only to pursue cases where they are sure they’ll be successful.
There is an alternative explanation.
In 2015 and 2025, coun Ghafoor suggested he was being ‘scapegoated’ or ‘politically attacked’ by the council. He has made the same allegation in light of the recent building collapse, criticising the council and Health and Safety Executive officers for interviewing his tenants as part of their routine investigation.
The council administration could have a motivation to pursue the Hollinwood councillor. He’s been part of two bids to oust the Labour leader coun Arooj Shah, and is regularly involved in venomous cross-party shouting matches that have seen several council meetings adjourned in the last two years.
And yet there is also a mounting body of evidence that points to coun Ghafoor and his business partner Zulqurnain’s alleged neglect.
We visited some of coun Ghafoor’s publicly listed addresses. The buildings are in a patchwork of conditions. While some were well-kept red-brick terraced dwellings, others showed signs of deterioration – weathered walls, sagging window sills, signs of damp.
At one of the properties, a tired mum-of-two let us into her home to see a giant gash in her ceiling. There had been a leak in December, which she said had forced her to move most of her furniture out of the living room and the room remained bare except for a sofa pushed up against the far wall.
The tenant lives with her husband and two kids in the small terraced house in Medlock Vale and didn’t want to be identified by name.
She indicated that while her landlord is responsive to messages, the workmen he sends sometimes don’t finish the job. The leak had returned shortly after a visit in February, and no workmen had returned since, she claimed.
The mum also showed us her back door – seemingly held in place with lumpily applied expanding foam.
“There’s a hole,” she said, pointing at a white kid’s vest hanging limply from a gap between the door and doorframe. “I’ve stuffed a shirt in because I’m worried it will let in rodents, or the cold, or snakes – though [the landlord] told me there are no snakes in this country.”
Beyond the door in a five by five foot concrete yard, an old radio pole lies sprawled across the threshold. Rusty screws stick out menacingly from its metal foot.
“It’s been like this since December, so I can’t let him play in the yard,” she says, deftly guiding her three-year-old back towards the door as he makes a break for freedom.
Asked about this tenant, coun Ghafoor said: “We operate as responsible landlords and have systems in place to address maintenance issues when they are reported. It is important to clarify that what has been described as a ‘crack’ is in fact a tear in the plasterboard caused by water ingress, not a structural defect. As with all managed properties, cosmetic repairs are scheduled appropriately to ensure issues are resolved effectively.”
He added the mast was fitted by a ‘third-party contractor’ who is responsible for addressing the issue, and that his business is ‘reviewing their position in relation to the original installer’. They claim to have removed the pole since the LDRS first contacted them about the issue.
Other tenants told us they had no complaints. At one of coun Ghafoor’s HMOs fly-tipped rubbish is piled up on the path to the front door and all the windows on the ground floor are partially blocked-off with cardboard. The doorbell doesn’t seem to work and nobody responds to a knock on the door.
But as the photographer snaps pictures of the property, a woman accosts him, looking distressed as she asks why he’s taking pictures of her home. She’s lived there for two years, she tells us once we’ve explained who we are, and adds, speaking very quickly, that she’s ‘never had any issues’ before darting across the road, away from us.
Elsewhere, an Alexandra tenant in a well-kept red-brick tells us he’s never had any problems with his landlords.
Later, on the phone to coun Ghafoor, before I can explain the reason for the call, he says sharply: “You’ve been looking into my properties, haven’t you?”
When we put what we’d seen to him, he said: “We recognise that issues can arise in tenanted properties, and we remain committed to addressing them promptly, practically, and responsibly.”
After the King Street house collapsed, evacuated tenants were moved from the council’s emergency accommodation into rooms on Chamber Road. According to a planning application from May 2025 in Mr Zulqurnain’s name, the former school is currently being turned into a care home for eight people.
When the residents were moved there, it reportedly had no heating, no running water, and no furniture except for a mattress on the floor. Plaster works were being carried out, with redecorating materials and dust sheets covering some of the rooms.
One of the tenants reportedly suffered health issues while staying there.
Coun Ghafoor said the address was undergoing routine decoration, that furniture had been delivered but not yet assembled, and that the place was used on a ‘short-term emergency basis’.
He added: “As soon as any indication of ill health was brought to our attention, immediate steps were taken to relocate the individual to alternative accommodation. The tenant remained at the property for only a very short period.”
And then there is the collapsed building itself. An investigation by the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is currently being carried out to establish exactly what happened.
The structure is next to the derelict site of another house that collapsed on King Street in 2016. The roof caved after its owner, who isn’t linked to KKS Investors or coun Ghafoor, illegally removed most of the internal walls and ceiling supports.
The property developer was jailed for eight months and handed a £65,000 bill for prosecution costs for breaching health and safety laws and failing to comply with regulations.
This is likely to have had an impact on the neighbouring 31 King Street, owned by KKS Investors, which has remained covered in plastic sheeting almost ever since.
KKS Investors acquired the address in 2019, and concerns were first raised to the owners in 2023. Going back on Google Maps, you can see the cracks visibly worsen in the intervening years.
Then on March 1, some of the plastic sheeting blew free, revealing the fracturing wall beneath and prompting the call to emergency services.
The council sent a building inspector, who based on an external inspection deemed the structure at ‘no immediate risk of collapse’. The local authority later clarified their definition of this term effectively meant ‘it won’t collapse in the next 24 hours’.
But coun Ghafoor later claimed in a council meeting, ‘it was the council officers who let the people back into the building’, and doubled down in a statement to the press, claiming ‘at no point would residents or tenants who have been allowed to occupy the building had any authority – including the council, building control, or fire services – deemed the property to pose a safety risk’.
But the inspectors did not deem the premises risk-free. KKS Investors were informed in no uncertain terms by building control that urgent works were required, and asked to see evidence of previously carried out remedial works. Once the company informed them (on March 10) of their plans to reconstruct the outer wall, they demanded further clarification about how the remedial works would be carried out safely – information that, according to the council, was never provided. No works should have been carried out until the company received approval.
KKS Investors refute the council’s version of events and say channels of communication between the council and owners ‘remained constantly open’ and the local authority was ‘fully aware of the companies’ plans to carry out site clearances and put up scaffolding’. Coun Ghafoor added that no works took place on the house as soon as it became clear that they still needed approval for the works from the council, but the council has stated they believed workmen were on-site between March 15 and 24. Evidence obtained by the LDRS appears to back up this claim, with contractors seen on the scaffolding just over an hour before the structure came down. Coun Ghafoor later explained the workmen were there for ‘inspection purposes only’.
This is significant because some – including coun Ghafoor himself – have raised the possibility the scaffolding itself, in combination with the storms that battered the UK in March, may have contributed to the collapse. Any works to the walls could also have created further danger.
The disagreements in timelines has led to an exchange of finger-pointing between some voices in the council and coun Ghafoor. It’s possible the full picture will only be known once the HSE investigation concludes. This could take years.
In the meantime, the tenants of King Street are left traumatised. One, who claimed to be inside the apartment when it collapsed, told the LDRS every time he tried to sleep ‘it feels like a building is falling on top of me’. While landlords and official bodies look for someone – or something – to blame, it’s the residents who continue to suffer the most.
KKS Investors were given several opportunities to respond to allegations for this piece. Coun Ghafoor said: “We strongly dispute elements of the timeline presented and believe it does not accurately reflect the level of communication and cooperation that took place [between the council and the company in relation to King Street]. We categorically reject any suggestion that works were carried out without the council’s awareness.
“We [also] categorically reject any suggestion that we have acted irresponsibly or without regard to tenant welfare. We operate a responsible property business and, where issues arise, we take prompt and appropriate action to resolve them. In the case of King Street, this was an evolving situation and decisions were taken in real time with the safety and wellbeing of tenants as the primary concern. We will continue to cooperate fully with any relevant authorities and address any substantiated concerns in a transparent and professional manner.”
His business partner Mr Zulqurnain added: “We take our responsibilities as landlords very seriously and are committed to providing safe and suitable accommodation. We strive to work collaboratively with local authorities and responding agencies to address any concerns promptly. Where issues have arisen, we have consistently engaged with the relevant parties to ensure they are resolved as efficiently as possible.”
