Yes, but the paperwork turns up earlier here than a town full of post-war semis would lead you to expect. Well over a hundred buildings are listed. Eight conservation areas cover the old streets and villages. Some of the ground is clay that moves as it dries out and gets wet again. It's a town where you can extend, and where you should budget for extra consents and extra engineering.
The area holds 166 listed buildings: nine at Grade I, four at Grade II* and 153 at Grade II. Listing protects the whole building, inside and out, so almost any change that affects its character needs listed building consent on top of any planning permission, and carrying out work without it is a criminal offence, not a paperwork slip. If you're buying one of those 166, the listing comes with the house. If you're buying next door to one, expect the planners to care what your extension looks like from the listed building.
There are eight conservation areas in and around the town, including the High Street in Sittingbourne, the High Street in Milton Regis, Tonge, Tunstall, Rodmersham Green and the Borden areas. Inside them, the council pays closer attention to design, materials and anything visible from the street, and changes that would pass without comment elsewhere can need a proper application. Before buying in one, ask the council exactly which restrictions apply to that particular street.
There are two scheduled monuments in the area. That's the strictest tier of protection, but it only affects land at or next to one of them, so it matters to a small handful of plots and not to anyone on an ordinary estate.
People here do extend their homes, and in numbers. The council received 1,529 planning applications between April 2024 and June 2026, 606 of them in the last twelve months. That's the neighbours adding rooms, changing what they've already got, and arguing with each other about it on the planning portal. The number tells you people apply. It doesn't tell you how many get approved.
The ground matters as much as the listing. The British Geological Survey places parts of the area in shrink-swell class 3, and about 21% of the area reaches that class. That's clay that expands when wet and shrinks when dry, which can move shallow foundations over time. For an extension, it means deeper foundations and a structural engineer's view before building control signs anything off. That's a normal step in any clay area, not a reason to walk away, and it's cheaper than finding out later that the new kitchen and the old house are drifting apart.
Two listed buildings in the area are on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register. They're buildings in poor repair whose restoration may attract grant funding and will certainly attract scrutiny. Neither is a hazard to someone buying an ordinary house down the road, but it does show which buildings the heritage officers are already watching.
In practice, an unlisted house outside a conservation area may be able to take a modest extension under permitted development without a full planning application. A listed building, or a house inside one of the eight conservation areas, is likely to need consent for much more. Check with the council before you plan the extension, not after you've already started building it.
Freedom to extend is one of the harder sides of owning a home here: allowed in most cases, but with more consents, more checks and more clay than the post-war streets would suggest.