Yes. Drybrook has very few heritage restrictions for a village of its age. There are four listed buildings, none of them above Grade II. There is no conservation area. Planning applications arrive at a steady pace. The complications are mostly underground.
Four buildings in Drybrook are listed, and all four are Grade II. None is Grade I or Grade II*. Listing means any change to the building itself, inside or out, needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission, and even small jobs like replacing windows can need sign-off. That applies only to those four buildings. Every other house in the village falls under the ordinary planning rules, with no listing to complicate them. The village has no scheduled monuments and no conservation area of its own, so there is no wider heritage zone covering whole streets.
Plenty of people are already extending. The area logged 304 planning applications between April 2024 and June 2026, and 126 of them came in the last twelve months. That counts proposals submitted, with no record of how many were approved, but it shows that loft conversions and new kitchens are routine here.
The ground needs more thought. Every postcode in Drybrook is within reach of recorded mine workings, and the whole village lies inside the coalfield consultation area. Thirty-seven postcodes sit directly above at least one recorded working. In practice that means a mining search as part of the conveyancing, and possibly a specialist report if the search flags something close to the house. It can also shape what a lender or insurer asks for, and what a structural engineer wants to see before signing off foundations for an extension. Order the mining search early and ask the engineer to read it before any extension plans are drawn up. Above ground, the rules here are light. Below it, the old workings are what an extension has to account for.
For most houses, that leaves the ordinary national system. Modest rear extensions, many loft conversions and smaller outbuildings can often go ahead under permitted development rights, which allow certain work without a full planning application, subject to size limits and conditions. Anything larger, anything at the front, and anything on one of the four listed buildings goes to Forest of Dean District Council for a decision. Building regulations apply either way. A house that has already been extended may have used up some of its allowance, so check the planning history on the council's portal.
Freedom to extend is one of Drybrook's real strengths. The heritage rules barely apply, and the main thing to check before you build is the mining search.