Law 31/1995 on the Prevention of Occupational Risks has been without a substantive review for almost thirty years. The reform that the Ministry of Labor has promoted in 2026 changes that — and the most relevant change for your company is not bureaucratic, it is one of focus.
The new framework requires that prevention be "effective and demonstrable". It is not enough to have the ORP plan on file. Your company has to prove that what is on paper happens in the plant.
Why the LPRL is changing now
The law was born in a work environment very different from the current one. Teleworking, psychosocial risks, the digitalization of processes and new forms of work organization were not on the radar in 1995. The European Strategic Framework 2021-2027 and the Spanish Strategy for Safety and Health at Work 2023-2027 already anticipated that the standard needed a major review.
The reform also responds to accident data: 796 workers died in Spain in 2024. More than two every day. The Ministry of Labor considers that the current model – focused on documentation – is not producing sufficient results.
What does “effective and demonstrable prevention” mean?
This is the change that most affects your management system. The reform reinforces the direct responsibility of the company in three specific areas:
Psychosocial risk assessment: Stress, mental burden, harassment and algorithmic pressure become the subject of mandatory and documented assessment.
Verifiable training: It is not enough to record that training was provided. The company must prove that the worker has integrated it into their behavior.
Reinforced documentary control: records of incidents, inspections and corrective measures must be available and traceable in the event of an inspection.
The key is traceability. The Labor Inspection no longer only verifies that there is a prevention plan — it verifies that this plan generates real and measurable actions.
An ORP system that cannot demonstrate what it does in real time does not meet the new standard. Paper is no longer enough.
Emerging risks that fall into the norm
For the first time, the reform explicitly regulates risks that many companies did not include in their evaluations:
Digital fatigue: prolonged exposure to screens, virtual meetings and notification overload.
Stress in hybrid environments: workers who alternate in-person and remote with blurred boundaries between work hours and personal time.
Climatic risks: exposure to high temperatures in work environments without adequate air conditioning.
Your OHS manager needs to incorporate these factors into the next risk assessment review. If your company operates with evaluations that are more than two years old, they probably do not cover any of these elements.
What it means for your documentation system
The reinforcement of documentary control introduced by RD 302/2026 — published on April 8 — has direct consequences on how your company records and manages security evidence:
Incident records must be immediate and traceable, not reconstructed after the fact.
Corrective measures must be documented with the date of implementation and assigned person.
Psychosocial risk assessments require validated methodology and documented periodic review.
Managing all of this with spreadsheets or paper folders leaves your company exposed. The inspection does not give notice, and the documentation must be available at the time it is requested.
The weak point of many industrial companies
Most industrial plants have correct written protocols. The problem appears when the Labor Inspection asks for evidence that these protocols are applied every day on the night shift, on line 3, with the team that entered three weeks ago.
Without a system that automatically records compliance in the plant — use of PPE, access to risk areas, safe behaviors — that evidence does not exist. And its absence is equivalent to non-compliance from the inspector's point of view.
How Safe responds to the new standard
Safe records in real time what happens in your plant: detection of PPE, access to restricted areas, incidents and risk behaviors. Each event is documented with image, timestamp and location.
When an inspection arrives, your OHS manager accesses the complete evidence history in seconds. You don't have to rebuild anything — the system has recorded everything automatically.
Request a demo of Safe and see how it generates the evidence required by the new LPRL