Yes, in most of Bourne End, and the paperwork thickens as you approach the old corners and the river. Forty-odd buildings are listed. Four conservation areas carry extra rules. Nothing in the village reaches the top heritage grade. The planning office will be busier with your clay than with your cornicing.
Bourne End has 42 listed buildings: none at Grade I, 2 at Grade II* and 40 at Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changes that affect its character, from an extension to replacement windows to a removed internal wall, need listed building consent on top of any planning permission. Working without it is a criminal offence, and the new owner inherits the problem. If your house is one of the 42, the conversation starts with the conservation officer and ends some months later.
There are 4 conservation areas: Abbotsbrook, Hedsor Road and Riversdale, Well End, and Wooburn Town. Inside them the council takes a closer interest in anything visible from the street, and some works that would be routine elsewhere, such as certain cladding, roof alterations or front extensions, need full permission. Buy in Abbotsbrook and you are buying a front elevation that half the village has an opinion about.
There is 1 scheduled monument, the round barrow cemetery on Cock Marsh, the strictest tier of protection. It matters only for land near it, and few house extensions will come anywhere close.
The neighbours are not deterred. Buckinghamshire Council's planning records show 372 applications in the area between April 2024 and June 2026, and 131 of them in the latest twelve months. That is a steady flow of people asking to change their homes, and it is the best evidence that extending here is ordinary business.
The ground has its own say. The British Geological Survey's published shrink-swell hazard reaches class 3 across 100% of the area, meaning clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry, enough to move shallow foundations. Its soluble rocks hazard also reaches class 3 across the whole area. Neither is a reason to give up on an extension. Both are reasons to have a structural engineer specify foundation depth, especially near trees, before the builder quotes.
In practice, a house outside the conservation areas and with no listing will usually have permitted development rights for modest rear and side extensions within national size limits, with no full application needed. Inside a conservation area those rights are narrower, a listed building has effectively none, and flats have none for extensions of this kind. Before buying, look up the house's planning history on the council's portal and ask whether any rights have been removed on that street.
Freedom to extend in Bourne End is middling: easy enough in the post-war streets, slower and dearer in the conservation areas and in the listed handful. Most owners will find the clay a bigger cost than the council.