Yes, and Iwade puts fewer heritage obstacles in your way than almost anywhere. A handful of listed buildings. No conservation areas. No scheduled monuments. The neighbours are building constantly. Your problem here isn't a heritage officer. It's the clay under the lawn.
There are four listed buildings in the area: one Grade I, none Grade II*, and three Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changes to one of those four need listed building consent on top of any planning permission. The other side of that is simple: unless you're buying one of the four, listing has nothing to do with you. The rest of Iwade was put up recently enough that its main historic feature is the warranty.
Neighbours aren't shy about using that freedom. Between April 2024 and June 2026 the area logged 871 planning applications, 353 of them in the last twelve months. That's a lot of kitchen extensions, loft dormers and garages turned into what estate agents call a snug. Where there's this much building, you won't be the first on your street to get the scaffolders in, and you probably won't be the last this year either.
The real constraint is underground. The British Geological Survey puts the area in shrink-swell class 3, and every postcode in the area reaches that class. Clay soils swell when wet and shrink when dry, and the ground moves with them. Compressible ground reaches the same class 3 across every postcode. None of that stops an extension. It means foundations may need to go deeper than the builder's first quote assumed, and a structural engineer should see the plot before the architect's drawings are signed off. Trees near the proposed footprint deserve a question too, because roots dry out clay. Better to learn that from an engineer than from a crack above the patio doors.
With no conservation area and no listing on ordinary homes, many rear extensions and loft conversions can go ahead under permitted development, the national rules that allow some work without a full planning application. Estates are the exception worth checking. The original planning permission for a development can remove or limit those rights, so read the property's planning history and title before assuming a single-storey rear extension is automatic. For anything bigger than permitted development allows, it's a normal householder application to Swale, without the heritage layer that slows things down elsewhere.
Freedom to extend is one of Iwade's strongest points. The only serious negotiation is with the ground, and a good engineer settles it before a single trench is dug.