Yes, and with very little heritage paperwork in the way. Mayland has one listed building. There's no conservation area. The neighbours apply for planning permission all the time. The only party with strong opinions about your extension is the clay underneath it.
The whole built-up area has a single listed building, at Grade II, and nothing at Grade I or Grade II*. Listing means almost any change that affects a building's character, inside or out, needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission. In Mayland that applies to one property. There are no conservation areas and no scheduled monuments either. With one listed building in the whole village, the odds that yours is the one are long, and the owner of that one already knows.
The planning records covering the area logged 2,215 applications between April 2024 and June 2026, and 1,008 of them in the most recent twelve months. That is a lot of people redrawing their houses. For a place that began in 1906 as a farm divided into plots, it fits. The houses were never meant to be finished, and the owners keep treating them as drafts.
The ground deserves more attention than the heritage registers. The British Geological Survey rates shrink-swell clay at class 3, its moderate band, and every part of Mayland reaches that level. Clay at this level swells when wet and shrinks in dry summers, especially near trees, so new foundations often need to go deeper than the minimum. A structural engineer's view on foundation depth is a normal part of the budget here, and no reason to drop the plan. The clay doesn't care what the planners allow.
In practice, many single-storey rear extensions, loft conversions and outbuildings can go ahead under permitted development rights, meaning no full planning application, as long as they stay within national size limits. With no conservation area, Mayland's homes keep the full set of those rights unless a past planning condition has removed them. On estates built more recently that is worth confirming, so ask Maldon District Council whether the house's original permission took any of those rights away. Anything bigger, taller or closer to a boundary goes through a normal application, and the volume of those already made locally shows they are routine.
Your freedom to change a home is one of Mayland's real strengths. Bring an engineer for the clay, and the rest of the paperwork is as light as it gets.