Yes, but the paperwork gets a vote before the builder does. Hundreds of listed buildings sit in the surrounding area. There are fifteen conservation areas. A quarter of the land lies in the Surrey Hills. The clay underneath moves regardless of what the council decides.
Across the wider area around Shalford there are 449 listed buildings: 17 at grade I, 23 at grade II* and 409 at grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changing a listed home needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission, and that includes work a normal house would get away with, from windows to internal walls. Grade II is the common tier and still carries that requirement. Grade I and II* are the rarer, stricter end, where the bar for change sits higher again. Buying a listed cottage means owning the house while a set of rules owns what it looks like.
There are 15 conservation areas in the same wider area, including one covering Shalford itself. Inside a conservation area, the council takes a closer interest in anything visible from the street, and many changes that are routine elsewhere, such as some extensions, cladding and demolition, need consent here. Being next door to a conservation area is not the same as being in one, so the boundary for the exact address is worth checking before the offer.
The area also holds 9 scheduled monuments, the strictest tier of protection. They matter mainly if the land you're buying sits on or beside one.
None of this has stopped people trying. Across the area, 3,553 planning applications were lodged between April 2024 and June 2026, 1,554 of them in the last twelve months. That's plenty of neighbours drawing up plans, which tells you alteration is possible here, if rarely quick.
The ground adds its own condition. The British Geological Survey rates shrink-swell clay in the area at class 3, and all of the area reaches that class. Clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry moves the foundations of anything built on it. For an extension, that means deeper foundations than a builder might quote from habit and a structural engineer's view before the design is fixed, especially near trees. It's a cost and a design question, not a reason to walk away.
In practice, a house that is not listed, not in a conservation area and not inside the Surrey Hills can often use permitted development rights for modest extensions without a full application. Listed status, a conservation area or the Surrey Hills designation can remove or narrow those rights, which is the part estate agents mention least when they say a house has "scope to extend". Check the property's status first, then talk to the council before paying an architect to draw something ambitious.
Freedom to extend is the weak spot in Shalford: heritage protection is dense and the clay is uncooperative. Plan the extension around the rules, not the rules around the extension.