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". Having your OHS plan filed away is no longer enough. Your company must demonstrate that what is on paper actually happens on the factory floor.
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 "effective and demonstrable prevention" means
This is the change that most affects your management system. The reform strengthens the company's direct responsibility in three specific areas:
Psychosocial risk assessment: stress, mental load, harassment, and algorithmic pressure become subject to mandatory, 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.
Strengthened documentary control: incident records, inspections, and corrective measures must be available and traceable in the event of an inspection.
The key is traceability. The Labor Inspectorate no longer simply checks that a prevention plan exists — it checks that the plan generates real, measurable actions.
An OHS system that cannot demonstrate what it does in real time does not meet the new standard. Paper is no longer enough.
Emerging risks now covered by the standard
The reform explicitly regulates for the first time risks that many companies had not included in their assessments:
Digital fatigue: prolonged exposure to screens, virtual meetings, and notification overload.
Stress in hybrid environments: workers alternating between on-site and remote work with blurred boundaries between working hours and personal time.
Climate risks: exposure to high temperatures in workplaces without adequate climate control.
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 this 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 an implementation date and a named responsible party.
Psychosocial risk assessments require validated methodology and documented periodic review.
Managing all this with spreadsheets or paper folders leaves your company exposed. Inspections arrive unannounced, and documentation must be available the moment 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 meets 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 officer accesses the full evidence history in seconds. Nothing needs to be reconstructed — the system has recorded everything automatically.
Request a Safe demo and see how it generates the evidence the new LPRL requires