Yes, you can extend most houses in Goring, as long as yours isn't one of the old ones and doesn't sit on one of the protected streets. A few dozen buildings are listed. Two conservation areas cover parts of the village. The whole place sits inside protected landscape. And the neighbours put in planning applications all the time. Extending is possible here, but nobody gets waved through.
Goring has 38 listed buildings: one Grade I, one Grade II*, and 36 Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changes that affect its character need listed building consent as well as any planning permission. For a Grade II house that can mean anything from an extension to the windows or the way a wall is finished. With only two buildings above Grade II, most listed homes here are the ordinary-historic kind rather than the national-treasure kind. That doesn't make the paperwork any shorter.
Two conservation areas, Goring and Gatehampton, Goring, bring a second set of rules. Inside them, the council looks at how a change affects the character of the area, not only the house itself, and work that elsewhere might need no application at all can end up in front of a planning officer. Goring also sits entirely within two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Chilterns and the North Wessex Downs, which planners weigh on anything visible from the landscape. Plenty of homes in Goring have views, and the planning system knows which ones.
None of this is putting people off. Between April 2024 and June 2026 there were 1,157 planning applications in the area, 498 of them in the last twelve months. Those figures show volume, not outcomes, but they do show an area where changing a house is routine. Whatever you're planning, someone on the next street has probably already applied for it.
In practice, a house outside the conservation areas that isn't listed may be able to do smaller work under permitted development, the national rules for changes that don't need a full application. A listed house, or one inside either conservation area, should assume consent is needed until the council confirms otherwise. Check the address against the listing register and the conservation-area maps before making an offer, not after the architect has drawn anything. The expensive mistake is buying a house for the extension you assumed you could build.
Freedom to extend in Goring is middling. Most houses have ordinary room to change, but around the listed buildings and inside the conservation areas, what you'd like to build and what you'll be allowed to build can be quite different.