Yes, and Caddington gets in your way less than almost anywhere with a medieval church. Two listed buildings. No conservation area. No scheduled monument. The heritage rules that tie period villages in knots hardly reach most of the houses here.
Historic England lists two buildings in Caddington, with none at Grade I, one at Grade II* and one at Grade II. Listing protects the whole building, inside and out, so changing a listed property needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission, and that includes work that would otherwise need no application at all. Grade II* marks a building of more than special interest, which gets closer scrutiny again. Two buildings is the full list. Unless you are buying one of those two, the heritage rules mostly don't apply to you.
People here are not shy about applying. The council's planning records show 931 applications in the area between April 2024 and June 2026, and 430 of those in the last twelve months. The figures say nothing about how many were approved, but they do show plenty of local households are trying. Filling in planning forms is close to a local pastime.
In practice, most unlisted houses here keep their full permitted development rights, the national allowances that let certain extensions, loft conversions and outbuildings go ahead without a planning application, within set limits. Caddington has no conservation area, so those rights aren't cut back the way they are in protected villages. Anything bigger than those limits needs ordinary planning permission from Central Bedfordshire Council, assessed on design and on what it does to the neighbours. A newer estate house can still carry a planning condition that removed some of those rights when it was built, so it's worth searching the council's planning register for the exact address. A village that spent its history digging clay for bricks has little ground to object when its residents want to lay a few more.
Caddington gives you about as much freedom to extend a home as any village can. Unless the house is one of the two on Historic England's list, the people you need to win over are the council's planning officers and the neighbours.