Yes, and with less interference than almost anywhere else in Cornwall. Two listed buildings in the whole village. No conservation area. No scheduled monument inside the boundary. Hundreds of planning applications lodged across the wider area in the past two years, so this is not a place where people sit quietly and put up with the kitchen they inherited. The thing most likely to complicate your extension here is not a heritage officer, it is what somebody dug out from under the garden two centuries ago.
On heritage, the count is the story. Historic England lists two buildings in Polgooth, both grade two, with none at grade two star and none at grade one. Grade two is the lowest of the three tiers and still the real thing: listed building consent is required for anything affecting the building's character, inside as well as out, and that includes windows, internal walls and things most owners assume are their own business. If you are buying one of the two, plan around it. If you are buying one of the rest, the listing regime is somebody else's problem entirely.
The absence of a conservation area is the bigger practical win. Conservation area designation is what usually strips permitted development rights in a Cornish village, and there is none covering Polgooth, nor a scheduled monument within the village boundary. That means the ordinary national permitted development rules apply to most homes here rather than a local layer of extra restriction on top.
The volume of local activity confirms that people do actually build. Across the planning window from April 2024 to June 2026, 811 applications were lodged in the surrounding area, 348 of them in the last twelve months. That is a working planning pipeline rather than a village frozen in aspic, and it means your architect will have recent local precedent to point at rather than starting from a blank page.
The complication is underground and it applies to everybody. This is a former mining village, and every postcode in it sits within reach of recorded abandoned mine workings, with up to 15 workings within a short distance and as many as six recorded directly beneath a single postcode. In plain terms that means a mining search is a normal part of buying here, a specialist ground report may be asked for on top, and a lender or insurer may want to see one before they commit. It does not mean the ground is unsafe or that your house is going anywhere. It means the paperwork has an extra chapter and the foundation design for a new extension is a question for an engineer rather than a builder's estimate.
Radon belongs in the same bracket. The village sits in the highest radon band across all its postcodes, which is a standard Cornwall finding and a standard Cornwall solution: new building work usually needs radon protection measures designed in, which is a cost line rather than a barrier.
Practically, most homes here should be able to use permitted development for the usual things, a rear extension, a loft conversion, a garden building, subject to the national size and height limits and to whether previous owners have already used the allowance up. Anything beyond that goes to Cornwall Council in the ordinary way. Check with the council whether an article four direction or a planning condition on your specific property has removed permitted development rights before you spend money on drawings, because that is the one restriction a village-level look cannot see.
Freedom to alter your house is one of the real strengths of buying in Polgooth: two listed buildings and no conservation area is about as light a heritage burden as a Cornish village gets. Budget for the ground survey rather than the heritage consultant, and you will have the more useful document.