Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on news from Croydon Tories’ HQ that many had been predicting for months, as four councillors are set to stand down
Going, going, going, gone: the four councillors who Croydon Conservatives confirmed today won’t be standing in 2026
Even when they are doing the decent thing and thanking their councillors for their service as they confirm they will not be seeking re-election in May, Jason Perry and Croydon Conservatives can’t manage to tell the truth. Little wonder no one trusts them…
Perry’s Tories have delayed the announcement of their council election candidates, but are expected provide 70 names for the full slate across 28 wards today or tomorrow.
Since 2022, the Tories have controlled Croydon Council, sending borrowing to record levels and issuing their own Section 114 notice of effective bankruptcy in that time. This has only been possible because piss-poor Perry managed to win the mayoralty. While Labour has 34 of Croydon’s councillors, the Conservatives have had 33.
But four of those won’t be standing for election on May 7: Maria Gatland (South Croydon ward), Mario Creatura (Coulsdon Town), and a couple of one-termers who barely made an impact during their time at the Town Hall, Holly Ramsey (Purley and Woodcote) and Fatima Zaman (Selsdon Vale and Forestdale).
Old mates: Maria Gatland was a ward colleague of Jason Perry for many years
It’s been an open secret that one-time IRA gun-runner Maria Gatland would be retiring at the end of this term of office.
Gatland, the Dublin-born former Maria Maguire, will be 78 next birthday. After 24 years as a Croydon councillor, she will retire generally respected and admired by her fellow councillors of all parties.
The same cannot be said of Mario Creatura.
That Creatura’s egregiously ambitious political career had come off the rails was well established almost a decade ago.
In 2017, the former gobby fac totem to MP Gavin Barwell and aide working in Theresa May’s No10, ran a disastrous General Election campaign in what was then the Croydon Central parliamentary seat. Creatura recruited the assistance of the dodgy religious cult, SPAC Nation, which has since been wound up by the Charity Commission, investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and whose leading members have also been subject to investigations into grooming and abuse.
So desperate was Creatura to become an MP that he moved his family home out of Croydon, to Banstead, to live in (what was then) a safe Tory constituency. Surrey Tories saw through Creatura’s self-absorbed bluster, though, and he was not selected.
He’d do anything for a parliamentary seat: two Tory political has-beens
By leaving Croydon, Creatura stymied himself as a councillor. He is no longer qualified to be a candidate for council elections without residency in the borough. Coulsdon and Croydon clearly mean so much to him, he has not bothered to establish a business presence in the borough, which might have sufficed to allow him to stand again. Had he wanted to.
Having lost his minor role as the Tories’ Town Hall chief whip, and being repeatedly overlooked for a seat in Mayor Perry’s cabinet (with the 40 grand a year in special responsibility allowances that goes with it), Creatura has clearly had enough.
Outside the council, Creatura had a string of director appointments in various PR companies (he never seemed to last very long in any job), and despite trading on his brief spell as “former Downing Street special adviser” (a job he was handed by his old boss, Barwell), Creatura has been unemployed for the past few months.
He has, though, landed himself a freelance position at NorthStar Advisory, a newish public relations outfit set up by… Barwell.
Untrue: Creatura has been living in Surrey for the past few years, which disqualifies him from standing for re-election as a Croydon councillor
Yet given such a background, and how well-known Creatura’s pursuit of Surrey selection has been, it seems sloppy (at least) for Croydon Tories to describe the Banstead home-owner as “a lifelong Croydon resident”, when he is not.
As well as lies, there was also a huge dollop of bullshit in today’s announcement from Croydon Conservatives. Mayor Perry claimed that the four councillors had “each brought dedication, integrity and care to the role of public service”.
Because while that might be true of Gatland, it certainly cannot be said of Creatura or the here-today-gone-tomorrow councillors Zaman and Ramsey.
Ramsey, who is in her mid-30s, had moved to Croydon after eight years as a councillor in Sutton and immediately was handed a safe seat in a true-blue Tory area for the 2022 elections. Little has been seen or heard from her since.
Likewise, Zaman, who has spent more time giving self-reverential interviews to British Muslim magazine than she has spent on residents’ casework. Zaman managed the grand total of just eight pieces of residents’ casework in 15 months, according to official council figures.
It was the hot gossip in Tory circles last summer that Zaman had been dropped from the approved candidates list, though Conservative sources denied this. In the end, the outcome is the same.
“I want to thank them for everything they have done. We wish them the very best for the future,” Perry is supposed to have said, having just done a bit of mid-winter pruning to the deadwood in the Tories’ Town Hall group.
Read more: Creatura left out of sorts after Epsom Tories pick Fraser
Read more: Tory candidate’s church is under police investigation for fraud
Read more: Serious Fraud Office investigating SPAC links to 50 companies
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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Your “predictions” for who was standing down were not correct then.
No: Sue Bennett, Richard Chatterjee, Simon Brew as you previous said.
Do you mean this:
Labour deputy leaders Young and Collins to stand down in 2026
Our information was bang on at the time of publication, in June last year. But things change, people change their minds, and party officials sometimes get their thumbscrews out. We report those changes when they occur.
In any case, as this latest artcile demonstrates, Tories lie.
You ought to be suspicious of the lengthy delay in Croydon Conservatives releasing their candidate list – almost five months later than in previous election cycles. The spectre of Reform Ltd has, we understand, played a part in that. Some Conservative councillors have agreed to put their names on the ballot paper one last time in the party interest, to provide the appearance of “continuity”, when they know that their prospects of actually being re-elected are slim to non-existent.
In the case of one of the Labour “retirees”, Patricia Hay-Justice, we know that they have been heavily lent on to stay for at least another four years.
In the case of Simon Fox and Simon Brew, our information is that local Tories took the decision not to allow candidates to do “the chicken run” to other wards, just as Labour blocked “Thirsty” Chris Clark’s flit from Fairfield to Addiscombe.
It all means the “casualty list” of councillors being either de-selected or not elected could be very high, come May 8.
Zaman has done sweet FA since becoming a councillor leaving it all to the capable Andy Stranack to sort out. It’s just something else to put on her CV even though she has contributed nothing to the Ward. Following the death of Mr Quadir, Croydon Conservatives needed a candidate for the by-election so perhaps Zaman was selected in haste, all I can say is please do better next time as I live in the ward!
How does 23-year-old, never-had-a-proper job son of the Grenfell housing minister come up to your requirements, Ted?
The loss of Maria Gatland is certainly the end of an era. A dutiful councillor doing long term public service to the electorate and her contribution to the upkeep of Croham Hurst cannot be underestimated.
As to the rest of them in this article it does demonstrate the malaise that faces local government with these public relations/comms. people who just see the role of local Councillor as a step up to better paid roles in the Private Sector. The sheer thought of putting in the hard graft to actually undertake their roles is a price worth not paying for them. Roll on the next bunch of short term mercenaries.
So Mario Creatura’s time at Croydon Council and his rapid advancement during his early years by Baron Barwell has come to an end. Decades of self promotion and ineffective attempts as some form of Machiavellian operator end in complete and utter failure. No doubt there must be someone who was assisted by him in his role as Councillor, but I reckon it will be a hard job to find one.
He certainly left Croydon in a far worse state than when he started out.