What is "devonwall"

Devonwall was a political concept introduced in the United Kingdom in the 1970s by the Conservative government. It was an attempt to link Cornwall and Devon together in an economic, political and statistical sense to form a South West region. This involved combining and centralising some local government functions and services such as the police, ambulance, fire services and media output such as local TV and newspapers.

Devonwall is a jocular name used in 2010 for a possible constituency that would combine parts of Devon and Cornwall and would be represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

The likely need for such a constituency to be created arose from the major 2013 Review of constituencies in England, instigated by the coalition government's legislation requiring constituencies to be within 5% of a given size. The portmanteau name is the same as that used for a previous proposal first introduced in the 1970s to combine Cornwall and Devon together in an economic, political and statistical sense to form a South West region.

In a nationwide study into the 2013 Review, the research group Democratic Audit considered the South West England review area, and published an idea of how the redrawn map might look. In that model the resulting cross-border constituency was called "Torridge and Tintagel". The Boundary Commission for England published its actual initial proposals on 13 September 2011, proposing a cross-border constituency as "Bude and Bideford", which was amended in October 2012 as "Bideford, Bude and Launceston".