The Green Belt village of Upper Halliford is located in Spelthorne Borough, Surrey, Greater London. It neighbours Walton-on-Thames, Weybridge and Chertsey. This neighbourhood is a rural village with a mixture of terraced, semi-detached, detached and residential flats dating from the 18th century to the modern day. The locality is close to the perimeter of London’s M25, where residents can effectively drive around Greater London if they wish. This neighbourhood area is also a close distance to the A309 and M3, making it easily accessible to other local towns and cities such as Twickenham in the north or Chessington in the south east. Furthermore, unlike many parts of the UK this area has an airport less than 7 miles away, which is only around a 15 minute car drive.

Saxon invaders reaching the most southerly part of the Thames in Middlesex were faced with a community of farmers, hence why they named the nearby area ‘Scepertone’, meaning ‘habitation of shepherds’. In the 1086 Domesday Book, Shepperton was recorded under ‘Scepertone’ with a population of just 25 households owned by Westminster Abbey. The River Thames has been an integral part of this village’s development, being used to transport agricultural products to London’s markets. Along with Shepperton, Upper Halliford formed the nucleus of a medieval manor and remained predominantly rural for much of its existence. Despite its riverside location the locality didn’t share the popularity of nearby towns, so it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that Upper Halliford was suburbanised. The local railway station wasn’t opened until 1944, when it was mainly used to service the local factories.

Dumsey Meadow is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is the only piece of undeveloped water meadow remaining on the River Thames.

In 2017, the National Campaign for Courtesy, ranked the nearby area of Shepperton as the politest town in the United Kingdom.

The neighbourhood is a majority white area with 87% of residents being ethnically white. This suggests that the area does not benefit from the multiculturalism of more central areas. It is also reasonably isolated from central London as local public transport routes are somewhat lacking.

US streaming giant Netflix, is planning to move into Pinewood’s filming studios in Shepperton. Pinewood are planning a £500 million expansion that will total approximately 1 million sq ft of new production accommodation, and comprise 17 sound stages. Productions are expected to start shooting on the expanded site from 2023. The backlot encroaches 4,450 sq m more into green belt land than prior permission had allowed, and there was concern about the impact of this loss. That said, the studios’ proposal has only received one letter of objection from neighbours, a potential sign of its general support.

Heathrow Airport’s proposed expansion, which includes the development of a third runway, will also see around £187 billion in UK economic growth as well as 40,000 new jobs created. But the Heathrow expansion initiative has been a controversial and unpredictably changing project: new emissions targets make the expansion difficult to achieve, the 2020-2021 pandemic has led to new projections that push the need for expansion 5 years to the future.