This consultation is all about Haldon View and you. We want to know what you think this proposed new neighbourhood, between Alphington and the open fields below the Haldon Hills, should provide.

Haldon View is a proposal for around 200 well-designed homes, a new 18-hectare country park and safe walking and cycling links on the south-western edge of Exeter. It has been shaped around the land itself: the homes sit on the lower fields, while the higher ground stays open, keeping the views towards the Haldon Hills that give the scheme its name.

We have been working on the concept for Haldon View for some time, and this exhibition sets out the latest thinking. Nothing here is fixed. The masterplan, the house types and the shape of the country park will all be refined in response to what people tell us.

On display are the draft masterplan, the thinking behind the homes and their design, and the proposals for the country park. More than half the site would be green, open space available to all.

Please take your time with the boards and tell us what you think. Everything you tell us will be considered before a planning application is prepared.

Most places owe their shape to the land they sit on, and Haldon View is no different. The masterplan began with a walk across these fields.

The site is around 33 hectares of arable farmland between Alphington and the A379, sloping gently towards the south-west. It is farmed as a single crop, scores low for biodiversity, and has no public access: the footpaths around its edges look into the fields, but nobody can walk them.

What the land does have is structure. Mature hedgerows and hedgerow oaks divide the fields, a green lane runs along the northern boundary, and from the higher western ground there are long views out to the wooded ridge of the Haldon Hills.

Those features set the rules for the masterplan. The hedgerows and oaks stay and become the edges of streets and the park. The lower fields, closest to Alphington and the bus routes, take the homes. The higher ground stays open, so the view that names the place is kept for everyone.

Context plan (not to scale, indicative). The site sits between Alphington and the A379, with the railway and River Exe to the east and the Haldon ridge to the south-west.

New homes should look as though they belong to Exeter, and we have drawn these from the city's own streets.

The 200 homes would range from one-bedroom flats and cottages to four-bedroom family houses, with a small number of bungalows. The intention is a place where people can live at every stage of life: a first home, a family home, and somewhere easier to manage in later years, all on the same streets.

Sixty of the homes — a full 30% — would be affordable, split between social rent and shared ownership, delivered on site and built to the same designs as the market homes, so the two could not be told apart. Social rent is generally around half of a private rent and goes to households on Devon Home Choice.

The drawings here show the three house types the masterplan is built around. They take their cues from Alphington's lanes and the villages below the Haldon Hills: steep slate roofs, painted render, and plinths and chimneys in the red stone that colours so many Exeter walls. Detailed designs would be settled at reserved matters stage, shaped by what you tell us now.

Draft house types, drawn for consultation. Working drawings and precise heights would follow at reserved matters stage.

A new country park of 18 hectares would wrap the western and southern edges of Haldon View — open land, free for everyone, where today there is no access at all.

The park is not an afterthought at the edge of the masterplan; it is half the point of it. Meadows, a community orchard, new wetland ponds and 2.5 kilometres of footpaths would turn closed-off arable fields into somewhere the whole of this side of Exeter can walk, play and breathe.

The design works with what is already there. The mature hedgerows and hedgerow oaks stay, managed properly for the first time in decades. New planting — meadow grassland, orchard trees, wet woodland around the ponds — would lift the site from one of the lowest-scoring habitats in the area to a measured 10% net gain in biodiversity, secured and funded for the long term.

At the highest point, a simple viewpoint would look out to the Haldon Hills, with the ridge kept free of buildings so the view belongs to everyone, permanently.

Country park concept, indicative. The circular path links Alphington, the village green and the Haldon viewpoint without crossing a road.

Haldon View would be a new neighbourhood for Exeter, which is why we are keen to hear from the people who know this side of the city best.

Everything you tell us during this consultation will be read and considered as the masterplan is refined. Our first job after the exhibition closes is to review every piece of feedback, publish a summary of what we heard, and set out what changed as a result — before any planning application is submitted to Exeter City Council.

An outline application sets out the principles of a development: how many homes, where the park goes, how the streets connect. Final details, such as the design of individual houses, are decided later through reserved matters applications, where there will be further chances to comment.

When an application is submitted, the council runs its own formal consultation too, seeking views from its highways and education teams, from bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, and from local people. Councillors on a planning committee then decide.