Yes, you can extend most houses in Staplehurst, as long as yours isn't one of the old ones. The village has a modest set of listed buildings. It has no conservation areas at all. The neighbours put in planning applications at a steady rate. For most buyers, the main obstacle to a rear extension is the people next door, not the rules.
Staplehurst has 70 listed buildings: 1 at Grade I, 1 at Grade II* and 68 at Grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so changing a listed home means applying for listed building consent on top of any planning permission. That includes jobs a normal homeowner would never think twice about, like replacing windows, knocking through a wall or changing a staircase. Almost all of Staplehurst's listed buildings are Grade II, the most common grade, but it still has real legal force. Carrying out work without consent is a criminal offence, and the fact that the extension came out nicely is no defence. The one Grade I and one Grade II* building are the most tightly protected, and nobody extends those on a whim.
The neighbours are clearly getting on with it. Between April 2024 and June 2026, the local planning register logged 1,385 applications in the area, and 550 of them came in the last twelve months. That's a village where somebody on most roads always has a loft, a porch or a garden room on the go. The builders' vans parked outside prove it daily.
For the typical semi or detached house built after the war, which is most of Staplehurst, permitted development rights are the natural place to start. Many modest single-storey rear extensions and loft conversions can go ahead without a full planning application, within the national limits. The lack of a conservation area helps, because those areas cut back what you can do without asking. The exceptions matter, though. A listed building, a house whose permitted development rights were removed when it was built, and anything larger or taller than the national limits all need proper consent. Check your title and the planning history of your address before you design the extension in your head. Buying a house to extend it, and then finding a condition that says you can't, is a mistake people make every year.
Freedom to extend in Staplehurst is middling. It's easy for most of the post-war houses and a serious undertaking for the handful of listed buildings.