Yes, and with less fuss than almost anywhere else in this part of Surrey. The village has one listed building. There is no conservation area within it and no scheduled monument. Neighbours put in hundreds of planning applications a year. Your extension will be judged on the ordinary rules and no one will be asking what Georgian builders would have thought.
Historic England's register lists one building in New Haw, at Grade II. There are no Grade I or Grade II* buildings in the village. Listing means that almost any change to the building, inside or out, needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission, and the council takes that requirement seriously. With one listed building in the whole village, the chance of that being the house you buy is very small. Most of New Haw went up in the commuter boom of the 1950s and 1960s, and nothing from those decades was protected.
Planning records show 788 applications in the area between April 2024 and June 2026, with 364 of them in the most recent twelve months. That is a steady stream of rear extensions, loft conversions and garage conversions, plus whatever the neighbours on Woodham Lane are up to this year. The figures cover applications made. Whether each one was approved is not part of this count. In New Haw a skip on the drive is about as common as a car.
In practice, with no conservation area or listed status involved, many single-storey rear extensions, loft conversions and outbuildings can go ahead under permitted development, the national rights that let householders build within set limits without applying for planning permission. Bigger or taller projects, two-storey side extensions and anything that changes the front of the house generally go to Runnymede Borough Council as an ordinary householder application. Two checks are worth making with the seller. The first is whether an earlier planning permission removed the house's permitted development rights by condition. The second applies to homes near the canal, where the Wey Navigation conservation area runs along the water and could include the end of a garden that the village-wide count leaves out. Both answers are in the council's planning records.
New Haw gives homeowners about as much freedom to extend and alter as anywhere near London. The rules that apply here are the national ones, and they are relaxed by Surrey standards.