spring:url value is ignored

I have the following in my jsp:

<spring:url var="editContactUrl" value="/next" />

and below it is:

<a href="${editContactUrl}">Contact</a>

My servlet context is test. The href resolves to

http://localhost:8080/test

and completely ignores the value="/next" I've also tried specifying context such as:

<spring:url var="editContactUrl" value="/next" context="test" />

and get the same result. What is going on?