Yes, in most of Farnborough, with ordinary paperwork. Listed homes are rare. There's one conservation area. The neighbours file planning applications by the thousand. Usually the thing between you and the extension is the planning queue, not a heritage officer.
There are 48 listed buildings in the area. Four are Grade I, two are Grade II* and 42 are Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so even replacing windows or moving an internal wall needs listed building consent, and doing the work without it is a criminal offence, not a planning technicality. In a town where only about 12% of homes on the council-tax list predate 1930, most of the 48 are churches, landmark buildings and aviation sites rather than somebody's semi. The chance of buying one by accident is small, and the survey will say so.
There is one conservation area in the wider area. Inside a conservation area, changes that would otherwise go through without an application, such as some alterations to front elevations, roofs and boundary walls, can need consent, and the council looks harder at how an extension sits with the street. Anyone buying near the older core should ask the council whether the address falls inside it before drawing up plans for the loft.
There are also two scheduled monuments, the strictest tier of protection. They matter mainly to anyone whose land adjoins one. For a typical post-war house, they are local history rather than a planning constraint.
The planning register shows how busy the town is with alterations. Between April 2024 and June 2026, 2,385 planning applications were lodged, 1,004 of them in the last twelve months. That is a town of people adding rooms, converting garages and arguing over rear extensions, which tells a buyer that altering a home here is ordinary business. The file will also show what the neighbours tried, and the neighbours will certainly have views on yours.
Two listed buildings in the area sit on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. That means buildings in poor condition whose repair may attract grant support and will attract close scrutiny. It is a matter for their owners and the council, not a risk to anyone buying an ordinary house down the road.
In practice, most Farnborough homes are post-war houses outside any designation, where modest rear extensions and loft conversions may fall under permitted development and bigger schemes go through a standard householder application. Flats never had permitted development rights to begin with. Anything listed, anything in the conservation area, or anything next to a scheduled monument needs a conversation with the council first. For everyone else, the first document to read is the planning history on the street, which shows what has already been approved.
The freedom to extend here is middling. Most houses face routine controls. A handful of protected buildings, one conservation area and a very busy planning register mean the paperwork is never quite as easy as the estate agent's "scope to extend" suggests.