Coastal management in Europe is shifting toward soft coastal protection strategies to deal with flood risk and erosion. An interesting example of this transition is the coastal enforcement project for the Bacton Gas Terminal (operated by Shell and Perenco) at Bacton, North Norfolk. The terminal is threatened by cliff erosion, and “Sandscaping” was included as an option to protect the terminal and nearby villages from coastal erosion. In this initiative, with Sandscaping being akin to “Building with Nature”, British partners collaborated to translate the Dutch Sand Motor to the different physical and socio-political context of the UK. Royal HaskoningDHV, one of the partners in the Sandscaping initiative, was responsible for the design of the longterm sandy solution. Jaap Flikweert, Flood Resilience Leading Professional at Royal HaskoningDHV, invited the postdocs of NatureCoast to share the latest findings of the Sand Motor during the design phase of the Bacton coastal enforcement. Besides the technical challenges of making accurate morphological forecasts of the sandy solution, the main challenge lay in establishing the public-private venture of Bacton Gas Terminal and the North Norfolk District Council.

Ecosystem services (ES) are increasingly embedded in policy agendas, but if and how policy actors are considering them is not often reported. This study assesses the extent to which ES were considered by key policy actors involved in the strategic decision-making process leading to an innovative large-scale Dutch coastal management project. We analysed retrospective interviews to ascertain which ES were considered and how they were described by policy actors. Over half of the quotes (118/228) and 16 out of the 17 interviewees referred to three broad ES categories, with high degrees of adoption: coastal safety, recreation and cognitive development (learning by doing). The broad terms ‘nature’ and ‘spatial quality’ were also referenced often (36 times). Our findings suggest that broad, unspecified ecosystem services were adopted highly by the policy actors, while specific ecosystem service categories were rarely considered. Relatable and comprehensible cultural ecosystem services also constituted critical arguments for policy actors in their strategic decision making. We reflect that ambiguous, broad terms can help to garner support and unite efforts across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. For ES to align with relevant aspects of decision making, a ‘translation step’ between ES research and decision making might be required and ambiguity should be acknowledged.