Yes, though the paperwork arrives before the builders. More than a hundred listed buildings stand in and around the town. Fifteen conservation areas surround it. Clay runs under every postcode. Plenty of people extend here, and they all do it in writing first.
Kingston and its immediate surroundings hold 115 listed buildings: 3 at Grade I, 14 at Grade II* and 98 at Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so almost any change to a listed home needs listed building consent from the council on top of any planning permission, and replacing like with like is the starting assumption. Most buyers will never own one. The ones who do own a building with a file on it that is older than their mortgage.
Fifteen conservation areas fall within the area around Kingston, from Kingston Old Town and Fairfield and Knights Park to Grove Crescent, Cadogan Road and Hampton Wick. Inside one, demolition, front-facing changes and some extensions face a closer look from the council, and the usual allowances for small works can be tighter. The council can also remove some of those allowances altogether on particular streets. Look the address up on the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames's conservation area maps and ask its planning team whether any extra restriction applies to that house specifically, since two roads a few minutes apart can be governed quite differently.
There are 4 scheduled monuments in the wider area, the strictest tier of protection there is. They matter mainly to anyone whose land sits next to one, where digging of any kind becomes a conversation with Historic England.
The neighbours are not deterred. Kingston recorded 1,143 planning applications between April 2024 and July 2026, 437 of them in the last twelve months. Whatever you have in mind for the back of the house, the planning department at the Guildhall end of town has very likely read a version of it this year.
The ground needs as much attention as the paperwork. The British Geological Survey rates shrink-swell clay at class 3 here, its moderate band, and 100% of Kingston's postcodes reach that class. Clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry can move shallow foundations, especially near trees, so a new extension is likely to need deeper foundations than the builder's first quote assumes and a structural engineer's view on the soil and any nearby trees. Brick making and pottery were local trades for centuries, and the material they relied on is still underneath the patio.
Two listed buildings in the area are on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. That means they are in poor condition and their repair may qualify for grant support, along with a great deal of scrutiny from everyone involved. For the owner of an ordinary house a few streets away, it changes nothing.
In practice, a house outside a conservation area and not listed keeps the usual permitted development rights for modest extensions and loft work, subject to the national limits and to prior approval where it applies. Inside a conservation area, or on a listed building, expect to apply. And since about 65% of Kingston's homes are flats, many owners have no permitted development rights for extensions at all, which makes the question less "can I build out the back" and more "whose back is it".
Kingston is a restrictive place to extend or alter a home, with heritage controls in more streets than most buyers expect and clay under all of them. It can be done, by people who budget for drawings, consents and foundations before they budget for the kitchen.