Inglewood, CA Outdoor Cooking: BBQ & Propane Rules (2026)

Section 12-12, Residential Accessory Structures, sets the placement rules that apply to a permanent barbecue grill built into a backyard. Subsection (e) lumps a permanent barbecue grill in with 'clotheslines, trash can storage areas, refuse enclosures, portable storage sheds...and other comparable accessory facilities and devices' and prohibits all of them from any yard that separates a residence from a public street, meaning the front yard and, on corner lots, the street-facing side yard. The only way around that ban is to enclose the street side yard behind a wall or opaque fence not less than five feet high, per the same subsection.

The rest of Section 12-12 supplies the structural limits an accessory grill enclosure has to fit inside: a detached accessory structure may cover no more than twenty-five percent of a required rear yard and may not exceed one story unless it is a garage apartment or ADU; it must stand at least six feet from the main dwelling and any other accessory structure; and on a standard interior lot a two-story accessory structure must clear five feet from the side or rear property line. Corner-lot and reversed-corner-lot setbacks differ, requiring ten feet from a street side lot line and five feet from a rear lot line abutting the side yard of the next lot.

The section has been amended repeatedly, most recently by Ordinance 24-02 on December 12, 2023, and before that by Ordinance 23-07 on January 31, 2023, showing the City still actively enforces and updates this accessory-structure chapter. Planning and Building Department staff review compliance during accessory-structure permitting and respond to code-enforcement complaints for unpermitted front-yard installations.