Surrey has become the latest and most vivid illustration of a planning row playing out across England's shire counties: a housing plan that requires northern boroughs to absorb vastly more new homes than their southern neighbours, provoking accusations of unfairness that go well beyond parish-pump politics. Under the government's revised standard method for calculating housing need, districts such as Woking, Guildford, Elmbridge and Spelthorne — all within easy commuting distance of London and sitting on land the new National Planning Policy Framework classifies as 'grey belt' — face annual targets that in some cases have more than doubled versus the previous local plan cycle. Meanwhile southern districts including Mole Valley, Tandridge and Waverley, much of which falls within the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, retain comparatively modest allocations, protected by tighter landscape designations that survived Labour's green belt reforms largely intact.