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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