Yes, and for most houses the only history standing in your way is the builder's quote. There are no conservation areas. Listed buildings are few, and none sits in the top grade. The neighbours are extending at a rate that suggests nobody got the memo about downsizing. Heritage isn't the obstacle here; the budget is.
The area holds 19 listed buildings in total: 0 at Grade I, 2 at Grade II* and 17 at Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so owners of one need listed building consent for changes that would affect its character, on top of any planning permission, and that process moves at the speed of people who measure time in centuries. For everyone else, and in a village built mostly in the late twentieth century that's nearly everyone, those 19 are something to walk past rather than something to apply around. There are 0 conservation areas, so no extra layer of control over windows, roofs or front walls on ordinary streets.
There's one scheduled monument in the area, the strictest tier of protection in the system. It matters to anyone with land next to it and to almost nobody hoping to put a kitchen on the back of a semi.
The planning register shows people altering homes all the time. From February 2024 to June 2026, the area logged 2,320 planning applications, 1,004 of them in the last twelve months. That's a record of what people asked for, not a record of what they got, so it says nothing about outcomes. What it does say is that the loft conversion is a local hobby and the side extension is practically a rite of passage.
In practice, many modest extensions and loft conversions on an unlisted house outside a conservation area can go ahead under permitted development rights, without a full planning application, within national limits on size and position. Anything bigger, taller or closer to the boundary needs permission. One check is worth making before the architect is paid: some newer estates were approved with conditions that remove permitted development rights, so confirm with the council what applies to the specific house. The buyer who skips that step finds out when the neighbour's complaint arrives before the scaffolding comes down.
Freedom to extend is one of Spencers Wood's real strengths: light heritage controls, no conservation areas, and a village full of neighbours who already went first.