Yes, and you will be asking permission more often than you were hoping. There are 171 listed buildings here and six conservation areas. Three scheduled monuments sit inside the area as well. Close to a thousand planning applications go in every year, so nothing is being blocked outright. The obstacle is not refusal. It is the number of parties entitled to have a view about your back wall.
Of those 171 listed buildings, 5 are listed at grade one, 3 at grade two star and 163 at grade two. Grade two is the tier most owners actually meet, and it is the one most people underestimate, because listing covers the whole building rather than the handsome part facing the street. Consent is needed for alterations inside as well as out, which means the internal wall you wanted to remove is as much a planning question as the extension you wanted to hang off the back. Doing the work without that consent is an offence rather than a paperwork slip, and it follows the house rather than the person who did it.
Six conservation areas cover parts of the town and the settlements around it, from the Wolborough Street end of the town centre out to Kingsteignton. Inside one, some of the permitted development rights that apply everywhere else are trimmed back, demolition of walls and outbuildings can need consent, and work to trees requires notice to the council before anyone starts. None of that stops an extension. It does mean the cheap version of the job, the one with plastic windows and a quick decision, is off the table.
Three scheduled monuments sit within the area, which is the strictest protection in the system and sits above the council rather than with it. It matters for very few houses, and for those few it matters absolutely.
The volume of work going on says plenty about how surmountable all this is. The planning register carries 2,258 applications across the area from March 2024 to June 2026, with 963 of those lodged in the last twelve months. People here extend, convert, glaze, and change what they own constantly. This is not a town where applying is unusual, whatever the constraint list looks like on paper.
There is a ground question too. About 47% of postcodes here have a recorded mine working within 500 metres, and 46 postcodes sit directly over one. This is not coal country, with none of the area falling inside a coalfield consultation zone, and the workings reflect the older clay and mineral trade the district was built on. In practice it means a mining search as part of the conveyancing, sometimes a specialist report on top, and a lender or insurer who wants to see both before they get comfortable. It is a process to budget time for, not a verdict on the building.
The practical rule is simple enough. Outside the designated areas and off a listed building, the usual permitted development rights apply and a modest rear extension is ordinary business. Inside a conservation area, on a listed building, or over one of those workings, assume you need consent, a search, or both, and find that out before you buy the house for its potential rather than afterwards from the enforcement officer.
Freedom to alter a house is the tighter side of what this town offers. It is entirely doable, and it costs more in time, professional fees and patience than an equivalent house on an unconstrained estate would ask for.