Yes, but Reigate expects to be consulted first. The town is thick with listed buildings. Eight conservation areas cover the older streets. Its castle and priory carry the strictest protection there is. Plenty of people extend here anyway, and most of them learn to love paperwork.
Historic England lists 158 buildings in the area. One is Grade I, 12 are Grade II* and 145 are Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so a new window, a knocked-through wall or a replacement staircase in a listed house needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission. Grade II is the common tier and still binding: the owner of a Grade II cottage has the same obligation to ask as the owner of the Grade I, just with less ceremony. Owning one of the 158 means owning a house where the original fabric outranks the owner's taste.
There are 8 conservation areas in and around the town: Reigate Town Centre, Wray Common, Somers Road, Chart Lane, and Flanchford Road and Colley Lane, with Linkfield Street, Shaw's Corner and St John's Redhill over towards the neighbouring town. In a conservation area the council's interest extends to the look of the street, so changes that would pass without a second glance elsewhere, such as front extensions, cladding or removing trees, tend to need permission. The house does not have to be special. The street does.
There are also 12 scheduled monuments, the tightest protection in the system, among them Reigate Castle, The Priory, the Bronze Age barrows on Reigate Heath, and a medieval undercroft between West Street and Slipshoe Street. They matter mainly to anyone whose land adjoins one, where digging foundations can become an archaeological event.
None of this has stopped the neighbours. The council logged 3,161 planning applications between April 2024 and June 2026, and 1,329 in the last twelve months alone. That is a town that alters its homes constantly, with loft conversions, rear extensions and garden rooms making their way through the system week after week. The volume is the evidence: extending in Reigate is normal. It is just rarely quick.
In practice, a house outside a conservation area and not listed keeps the ordinary permitted development rights, which allow many rear and loft extensions without a full application, subject to the national limits. Inside a conservation area those rights are narrower, and for a listed building almost any meaningful change needs consent. The first job for a buyer with plans is to check which of those three categories the house falls into, before the architect, not after.
Freedom to extend in Reigate is below average, and the heritage that makes the streets worth living on is the same heritage that decides what you can build on them.