CONSERVATIVE candidate Claire Perry has retained her Devizes seat and increased her majority in the 2015 General Election.

Mrs Perry took 28,295 of the 49,139 votes cast in the Devizes constituency, traditionally a Conservative safe seat, where there was a 71 per cent turnout, up 2.13 per cent from the previous election.

In 2010 her closest rival was Lib Dem candidate Fiona Hornby who got 12,514 votes compared to Mrs Perry’s 25,519.

This time round her closest competitor was UKIP candidate David Pollitt who received 7,544 votes.

She said: “I feel very relieved. You never know until the last minute what the result is going to be.

“I think we had a genuinely nice campaign with great other candidates, it was a very good humoured campaign.

“I’m humbled to have the support of so many people and to see my majority go up that much, it makes me feel that I have to work even harder to satisfy the constituency.”

On returning to Westminster Mrs Perry explained that her first two priorities for the Devizes constituency would be to get a Primary Care Centre in Devizes and to protect Bedwyn train services.

She said: “What I’m focused on is delivering those things for my constituency regardless of what else comes along.

“I had several pledges to drive up the number of good and outstanding schools, keep working on the resettlement programs and keep getting the infrastructure we need like super fast broadband which is rolling out but painfully slowly.

“I will serve everybody regardless if they voted for me, that’s my job.”

Earlier in the evening Mrs Perry vowed on Twitter that she would eat and entire lardy cake from Marshalls bakery in Pewsey if she won the Devizes seat.

She said: “I always keep my promises, it will get eaten and I will eat the majority of it myself.

“I’ve got my lovely partner Bill O'Neill here who is down from Cambridge, I’ve got my big sister, I’ve got two of the three children and I think we’ll probably go home and have a cup of coffee and a slice of lardy cake.

“There won’t be any alcohol tonight. Somebody offered me a yard of 6X and I said ‘only in sips’.”

In the last election the Devizes UKIP candidate Pat Bryant did not gain the five per cent of votes needed to have her deposit returned but the outlook is very different for their candidate this time round.

Mr Pollitt said: “It’s a great result for us from where we were five years ago, to come second with 15 per cent, it’s the start of a long-term strategy.

“We were hopeful and certainly we gave it our all and I think the effort showed in the end.

“We’re ahead of where we thought we’d be at this stage and I’m just looking forward to seeing what the national results are and what the council results are.

“We’re here to stay and we’re a serious force now and I think the other parties will look at us differently now and maybe take us a bit more seriously.”

There was a significant reduction in votes cast for the Lib Dems with their Devizes candidate Manda Rigby gaining just 3,954 votes.

Labour candidate Chris Watts received 6,360 votes and Green party candidate Emma Dawnay receiving 2,853 votes with 132 ballot papers rejected.