Yes, for most homes, but the area around Datchet carries more heritage protection than a village usually does, and the owner of a listed house will need consent for almost anything. The listed buildings run into the hundreds. A couple are in the top grade. The conservation areas nearby are named after other villages. The neighbours are applying for planning permission at a steady clip, so the system is busy and very much open.
The area around Datchet holds 160 listed buildings. Two are Grade I, the highest grade, 12 are Grade II* and 146 are Grade II. Owning any of them means listed building consent for changes to the inside as well as the outside, including the kind of jobs most owners treat as decorating, and doing the work without consent is a criminal offence. Check the national heritage list for the exact address while the survey is being arranged, because a listing does not always show in the photographs.
There are three conservation areas in the same wider patch, named for Colnbrook, Egham and Englefield Green. Inside a conservation area the council can ask for planning permission for alterations that would elsewhere go ahead without it, such as some changes to roofs, front elevations and cladding, and demolition needs consent. Datchet's name is not on any of the three, which suits the owners of the village's post-war semis very well.
Four scheduled monuments are in the area, the strictest tier of protection there is, and it matters mainly to anyone with land beside one. In 2017 investigations at Riding Court Farm turned up an early Neolithic causewayed enclosure that nobody had known was there, so the ground around Datchet has a habit of producing history at short notice.
The neighbours are not deterred. The council received 2,779 planning applications across the area between April 2024 and June 2026, and 1,211 in the last twelve months alone. That is a lot of loft conversions, rear extensions and new porches being sent in for approval, and evidence that people here alter their homes as a matter of routine. Datchet has been arguing with building authorities since 1249, when Henry III handed over a great oak from Windsor Forest for a barge, and the paperwork has only become more formal since then.
For an unlisted house outside a conservation area, the usual permitted development rights apply, so many single-storey rear extensions and loft conversions within the size limits go ahead without a full planning application. A listed building or a house inside a conservation area loses some or all of that freedom, and the council should be asked first. Get the council's confirmation of what is permitted in writing, because a builder's view on what is allowed does not count once the work is up.
Datchet is restrictive for home extensions in the places that matter, with dense listing around it even though most ordinary houses in the village keep their normal rights. Owners of the older properties should expect to make a planning application for nearly everything.