Yes. In Collier Row, extending a house is mostly a matter of builders and budgets, with very little interest from the heritage side. Only a handful of buildings are listed, and none above the standard grade. Just one conservation area falls in range, and it covers no streets of houses. Your neighbours are applying for planning all the time. The ground beneath the house needs more thought than the paperwork does.
Historic England lists 11 buildings in and around Collier Row, all of them grade II, with none at grade I or grade II*. Listing means any change that affects a building's character needs listed building consent on top of ordinary planning, and that applies inside as well as out. With 11 listed buildings across an estate of thousands of homes, the odds of buying one by accident are low, and the seller would have to tell you anyway. The Romans had a settlement here, and they left fewer restrictions on top of the ground than you'd expect from a place with that history under it.
There is one conservation area within range of Collier Row, the Chadwell Heath Anti-aircraft Gun Site. Inside a conservation area, demolition, some cladding and changes facing the street can need consent that would be automatic elsewhere. This one protects a military site, so it doesn't affect the interwar streets where people actually live and want to extend.
Havering Council received 390 planning applications for the area between April 2024 and June 2026, 167 of them in the last twelve months. That's a steady volume of side extensions, rear extensions, loft conversions and other changes from people who bought a 1930s house and want more room in it. A street where every third house has had a new rear wall built shows clearly enough what the planning system will accept.
The British Geological Survey puts the whole of Collier Row in shrink-swell class 3, with every postcode reaching that level. That means clay that swells in wet weather and shrinks in dry spells, so foundations have to go deep enough to sit below the layer that moves, especially near trees. A structural engineer's view early on is sensible, and the cost belongs in the budget from the start so it doesn't arrive as a surprise halfway through the build. If the house already has an extension, ask the seller for the building control completion certificate, which shows that someone signed off the foundations of the last one.
Three listed buildings in the area are on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. That means they are historic buildings in poor condition, and repairing them may qualify for grant support and will certainly come under close scrutiny. It's a matter for whoever owns those three buildings, and it has no bearing on someone buying a semi a few streets away.
In practice, a house in Collier Row that isn't listed and sits outside the conservation area can often take a modest rear extension or a loft conversion under permitted development, the national rights that let some work go ahead without a full planning application. There are size limits, and a lawful development certificate from Havering Council is a cheap way to confirm a project qualifies. Larger or more unusual plans go through ordinary planning, and the volume of applications above shows that's a well-trodden route.
The freedom to change your home is one of Collier Row's real strengths. The council will mostly let you build, and the clay will decide how deep you have to dig.