Yes, and in Shinfield history is unlikely to be what stops you. Only eight buildings are listed. There are no conservation areas. The neighbours put in planning applications at a steady clip. What stands in the way of your extension is a planning officer, not a heritage officer.
Listing is the heaviest restriction a home can carry, and Shinfield has very little of it. The area holds 8 listed buildings: 1 at Grade I, the top tier reserved for buildings of exceptional interest, none at Grade II*, and 7 at Grade II. A listed building needs listed building consent for most alterations inside and out, from windows to walls, on top of any planning permission. If your house is one of those eight, you already know, because the sale particulars will have mentioned it at length and the survey will have mentioned it at greater length. If it isn't, listing doesn't apply to you. There are also no conservation areas in the area, so the extra layer of control over demolition, trees and the look of a street does not come into play.
The planning register shows people altering their homes all the time. Between February 2024 and June 2026 the council logged 883 planning applications in the area, 372 of them in the last twelve months. Those figures cover every kind of application, not only extensions, and a count of applications is not a count of approvals. What they do show is that changing a house in Shinfield is an ordinary thing to do, not a campaign.
In practice, that leaves most homeowners dealing with the standard rules rather than special ones. Many modest extensions and alterations can go ahead under permitted development, the national rights that let certain works proceed without a full planning application, within limits on size, height and position. Anything beyond those limits needs planning permission from the council in the usual way. A lot of Shinfield's homes are recent builds, so check whether your house's original planning consent took any of those rights away, and check before the builder's deposit rather than after. A lawful development certificate from the council is the cheap way to confirm your plans fit.
Freedom to extend is one of Shinfield's real strengths: unless you have bought one of the eight listed buildings, the rulebook is the national one and the only heritage in the way is next door's opinion.