Douglas’ role
Douglas Johnson is a councillor for City Ward, along with Ruth Mersereau and Martin Phipps. He was elected in 2016 and again in 2021 and 2024.
Douglas is Chair of the council’s Housing Policy Committee and a member of the cross-party administration of Sheffield City Council as a member of the Strategy and Resources Committee, along with Cllr Angela Argenzio.
He is also a member of the Council’s Finance and Performance Committee, Charity Trustee Sub-Committee, the Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Board and the Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee. He was formerly a member of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committee. he also has experience of licensing, health scrutiny and was previously (2021-22) Cabinet member for Climate Change, Environment and Transport. Full details are on the council website.
Background
Elected in 2016, Douglas previously supported the Green councillors, including Jillian Creasy, Bernard Little and Rob Murphy, for many years in Central ward.
He says, “I became involved with the Green Party because it was an opportunity to use my skills to make people’s lives better. Small-scale, practical actions can get real results that make a big difference.”
Douglas previously worked for advice centres, law centres, Sheffield’s Housing Aid Centre and in private practice. At Housing Aid, he worked on preventing people losing their homes and at Sheffield Law Centre developing discrimination law.
Successes for disabled people included ground-breaking discrimination cases against the Royal Bank of Scotland, Thomas Cook travel, Northumbria Police and the Scout Association, as well as legal action to reverse the cuts to 265,000 concessionary bus, tram and train passes in 2014. He won the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year for social welfare law in 2014 and gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on using the Equality Act 2010 to advance the rights of disabled people.
Contact Douglas at douglas.johnson@councillor.sheffield.gov.uk or tel 07981 860662