Yes, and the register says most people do exactly that. Only thirty buildings in and around the village are listed, and nearly all of them sit at the lowest grade. One conservation area governs how the older core looks. Everything beyond that boundary is ordinary planning territory, which in a village largely built after the war is most of the housing. The real constraint here is not heritage protection, it is whether what you propose survives contact with a parish that notices new roofs.
Historic England's list carries 30 entries covering the village and its immediate surroundings: one at Grade I, none at Grade II star, and 29 at Grade II. Listing applies to the whole building, inside as well as out, which catches the things owners assume are their own business. Internal partitions, staircases, replacement windows and the wrong mortar mix all become consent matters. Grade II is the liveable tier of protection rather than a glass case, but the burden is on the owner to justify the work and use materials the building can carry.
One conservation area covers the village. Inside it, control widens from individual buildings to the look of the place: demolition, work to trees and the details visible from the street come into scope, and permitted development rights can be narrowed compared with an equivalent house outside the line. Outside the boundary, none of it applies. That boundary is the single most valuable thing to establish before an offer goes in, because two houses on the same road can sit on opposite sides of it and face completely different rules.
There is also one scheduled monument within the area. That is the strictest protection in the system and it guards archaeology rather than architecture, so it concerns anyone whose plans involve significant groundwork near it far more than it concerns a standard rear extension.
Volume tells the honest story better than policy does. The planning register holds 1,352 applications for this area across the window from April 2024 to June 2026, with 570 of them lodged in the twelve months to June 2026. People here extend, re-roof, convert lofts and swap garages for rooms at a steady clip. What each of those applications was granted is a separate question this page does not answer, but the appetite is not theoretical.
In practice the sequence is dull and worth following. On an unlisted house outside the conservation area, a modest rear extension, a loft conversion or a garden room often falls within permitted development, and the confirmation comes from Teignbridge before the builder arrives rather than after the scaffolding goes up. On a listed building, consent applies whatever the scale, including work that feels like repair. Inside the conservation area, the test is what the street sees. Three checks settle almost everything: is the house listed, is it inside the conservation area boundary, and what do the deeds restrict.
Most owners here get on with their plans and the paperwork behaves like paperwork. The exception is the handsome old one on the corner that everybody admires, where listing and conservation control turn out to be entirely real, and that is the middling bargain this village offers: ordinary freedom for ordinary houses, genuine rules for the ones people fall in love with.