You can try to extend a home in Paddington, but expect a long process and to give up most of what you ask for. More than 1,500 listed buildings stand in and around the district. Conservation areas cover most of the streets. Even the ground under the houses comes with a warning attached. People here still apply for changes in large numbers, and they all go through the same forms.
Historic England lists 1,586 buildings across the wider area: 20 at Grade I, 70 at Grade II* and 1,496 at Grade II. Listing protects the whole building, inside and out, so changing the windows, taking down a wall or putting in a new staircase can need listed building consent on top of planning permission. Grade II is the commonest grade, and it still means a heritage officer has to sign off the plans before the builder starts.
There are 27 conservation areas in the same stretch of west London, among them Bayswater, Paddington Green, Queensway, Westbourne, Maida Vale and the Hallfield Estate. In a conservation area the council takes a close interest in anything visible from the street, from roof lines and front walls to the trees on the pavement. A conservation area covers a whole street, so a house that is not itself listed still has a say from the council over its frontage.
The area also has 2 scheduled monuments, the strictest category of protection, though they matter only to someone building on or next to one.
People do still try. Westminster City Council logged 2,667 planning applications for the area between April 2024 and June 2026, 1,151 of them in the last twelve months. That is a lot of households drawing up plans, paying for drawings and waiting, and the volume says nothing about how many got what they wanted. The big changes to the district's skyline went up on old railway and canal land at Merchant Square and the former goods yard, and on the old terraces the scope for change is much smaller.
The ground is a separate issue. The British Geological Survey puts the whole area in shrink-swell class 3, meaning clay soils that swell when wet and shrink when dry. That does not stop an extension. It does mean deeper foundations than a buyer might budget for, and a structural engineer should give a view before an architect commits to a design.
Historic England's Heritage at Risk register includes 11 listed buildings in the area. Those are buildings in poor condition whose repair may attract grant money and will certainly attract scrutiny. For the owner of an ordinary flat nearby they change very little, apart from showing how seriously everyone here takes old masonry.
In practice, the usual permitted development rights that let householders elsewhere add a modest rear extension without applying count for little in Paddington. Most homes here are flats, which have none of those householder rights to begin with, and listing and conservation-area status restrict them further for the few houses that do. Ask Westminster City Council whether the building is listed or inside a conservation area, and read its full planning history on the council's register before the survey, so you know what the last owner was refused and why.
Freedom to extend is about as limited in Paddington as it gets, so buy the home you want to live in, because the one you hope to turn it into will probably not be approved.