Goodwill Isn’t Just for Christmas — How Government is Paying the Price When We Forget That

As the festive season approaches, we are reminded of the familiar refrain: “Peace on earth, goodwill to all.” Yet for local government in the UK, goodwill too often feels absent. Councils are increasingly left to pick up the pieces when everyday kindness — the small acts of decency that once sustained communities — disappears. From bollards on pavements protecting pedestrians, to campaigns reminding people not to litter or to take responsibility for their health, local authorities are filling gaps that used to be maintained by shared civic norms. Christmas reminds us of the spirit of generosity and care; the challenge is making that spirit last all year, not just in December.

Local government is often described as the frontline of the state. In practice, it has become the shock absorber for a wider breakdown in social norms. Operational pressures facing councils are no longer just financial or logistical — they are moral. When residents refuse vaccines, ignore traffic laws, or treat shared spaces with disregard, it is local authorities who manage the consequences: higher hospital admissions, pedestrian injuries, and more resources spent on cleaning and enforcement.

The 2025 Reith Lectures, delivered by Rutger Bregman, offer a useful lens for understanding what is happening. Bregman argues that modern societies are suffering not just from institutional strain, but also from a moral decline — a loss of shared expectations about how we treat one another and the collective systems we depend on. For local government, this decline impacts budget lines, as councils are forced to intervene where social norms once sufficed.

When Social Norms Fail, Infrastructure Takes Their Place

Take highways and public realm design. Many councils now install bollards and pedestrian guards not as enhancements, but as defensive measures. They exist because informal compliance with the Highway Code can no longer be assumed. Where drivers once self-regulated — slowing near crossings, yielding to pedestrians — councils now have to enforce safety physically. This is not simply a transport issue. It is a moral substitution: concrete replacing courtesy, capital expenditure replacing mutual care. Every bollard is a signal that trust has failed somewhere upstream.

The same pattern is also evident in waste and environmental services. Why should councils need to fund radio adverts telling people not to throw litter out of car windows? This was never normal in the UK. Littering used to carry social stigma; now it requires public messaging, enforcement teams, and clean-up contracts. Informal social correction has weakened, and public services bear the cost.

Public Health: When Individual Decisions Affect Everyone

Public health offers a starker example of what happens when collective responsibility erodes. Local authorities are increasingly managing the consequences of vaccine refusal, influenced by organised misinformation campaigns and declining trust in institutions. Lower uptake of vaccines like measles and seasonal flu leads directly to:

• Higher hospital admissions,
• A greater cost for the NHS
• Results in worse outcomes for clinically vulnerable residents.

Public services may not control vaccine narratives, but they absorb their consequences — through adult social care budgets, increased spending on public health campaigns, and emergency planning. Once again, collective responsibility has been replaced by individualised decision-making, and the cost is socialised.

Bad Actors or Bad Manners?

It is tempting to blame “bad actors” — influencers, media personalities, or organised groups spreading misinformation. But much of the problem is quieter and more pervasive: a drift away from everyday civic responsibility. Fewer people feel accountable to one another. Rules are seen as optional. Courtesy is reframed as weakness.

Local government cannot legislate kindness — but it cannot function without it either. Enforcement alone — fines, penalties, or physical barriers — is costly, reactive, and insufficient. The deeper solution lies in cultural renewal: rebuilding the everyday expectations and behaviours that make collective life possible.

Kindness as Policy

This is where the idea of an epidemic of kindness becomes relevant — not as sentiment, but as strategy. Kindness, in practical terms, means:

• Reinforcing norms that prioritise the collective good.
• Designing services that assume cooperation rather than conflict.
• Modelling respectful behaviour from institutions downward.
• Rebuilding trust between citizens and the systems that serve them.

Local government is uniquely placed to cultivate this culture. Councils shape the everyday environments where norms are learned: streets, schools, libraries, parks, and care services. Small signals matter. How rules are communicated. Whether residents feel respected. Whether enforcement is perceived as fair rather than punitive.

Kindness creates compliance without coercion, resilience without infrastructure, and trust without transaction costs. It ensures that “goodwill to all” is not just a Christmas message, but a year-round reality.

The Strongest Antidote

Local government cannot solve moral decline alone, but it also cannot ignore it. Every bollard, advert, enforcement officer, and emergency intervention is evidence that something upstream has failed. Councils are being asked to fill the gaps that social norms once maintained.

The lesson from the Reith Lectures is not that institutions are powerless, but that they must be morally ambitious again. Not louder. Not harsher. But clearer about the values that make collective life possible.

Kindness is not naïve. It is not weak. It is the most potent antidote we have to cynicism, fragmentation, and decline — because it rebuilds the very norms that enable society and the state to function at all. And without those norms, no amount of infrastructure, campaigns, or enforcement will ever be enough.