Overrriding spring version in Spring boot/ spring cloud - spring-boot

Question

I note that with spring cloud Angel.SR3 which uses Spring Boot 1.2.4, the spring version loaded is 4.1.6.RELEASE.
There is a memory leak issue in the yaml processor that I read was fixed in spring 4.1.7.RELEASE.
Specifically addressed in this https://jira.spring.io/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10000&version=14936 ([SPR-13173] - YAML Processor leaves StreamDecoder open)
I tracked through and saw that the starters use ${spring.version} to specify the spring version to be used.
I tried overriding by adding 4.1.7.RELEASE to my properties, but it still loads the 4.1.6 version
Anyway I can do this? I understand that these are curated but this particular memory leak is causing us a lot of issues.
As requested I have attached the front part of the pom. All base dependencies are pulled in through the spring cloud parent. I noticed that they use ${spring.version} to define the correct value of spring. I attempted to override it via a property setting. At no time in the rest of the my pom do I explicitly bring in any of the spring framework libs. The parent pom does that.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.libertas.vipaas</groupId>
<artifactId>vipaas-starter</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0</version>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
<name>Vipaas Starter</name>
<description>Vipaas Starter</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>Angel.SR3</version>
<relativePath/>
<!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
<maven.javadoc.skip>true</maven.javadoc.skip>
<spring.version>4.1.7.RELEASE</spring.version>
..... other stuff ...
</properties>
... other stuff as not relevant ....

Answer 1

Using dependencyManagement it should work:
<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
<version>4.1.7.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>
You can check it with:
mvn help:effective-pom | grep -A1 "artifactId>spring-context"