Yes. Goffs Oak is one of the easier places in the area to extend a house. No conservation area covers the village. There are only a handful of listed buildings, all at the lowest grade. The neighbours send in planning applications by the hundred. The main thing to check is the clay underneath.
Historic England lists 14 buildings in Goffs Oak. All 14 are Grade II, and none are Grade I or Grade II*. If you own one of them, almost any change that affects its character, inside or out, needs listed building consent from the council as well as any planning permission, and doing the work without it is a criminal offence. That applies to 14 buildings, so for most houses in Goffs Oak the listing rules simply don't come up.
The planning register shows how busy the village is. Broxbourne's planning records hold 633 applications for Goffs Oak between April 2024 and June 2026, 264 of them in the last twelve months. People here extend their houses, convert lofts and rebuild garages all the time, and the paperwork follows. A scaffold on the next drive is just a neighbour keeping up.
The ground is the part that needs attention. On the British Geological Survey's shrink-swell scale, Goffs Oak reaches class 3, and the whole area is at that class. Shrink-swell describes clay that swells when it is wet and shrinks as it dries out, so a new extension usually needs deeper foundations than it would on firmer ground, and the design should come with a structural engineer's view of the soil and of any trees nearby. That adds to the cost, but it isn't a reason not to build. In a village named after an oak, any tree near the back wall belongs in the engineer's report.
With no conservation area, most unlisted houses in Goffs Oak keep the ordinary permitted development rights that let modest rear extensions, loft conversions and outbuildings go ahead without a full planning application, within the national size limits. Anything larger, taller or nearer the boundary needs permission from Broxbourne Borough Council, and a listed house needs consent for far less. Newer houses can be the exception, because a planning condition from when they were built can remove those rights. Ask the conveyancer to look for one in the original consent, because a loft conversion that was allowed on the house next door may not be allowed on yours.
Extending a house is one of the things Goffs Oak makes easy. The heritage rules touch very few homes, and the main hurdle is the clay, which a good foundation design can deal with.