Asturias reorganizes the Institute for the Prevention of Occupational Risks after twenty years

The Governing Council of the Principality of Asturias approved Decree 74/2026, of October 13, which establishes the new basic organic structure of the Asturian Institute for the Prevention of Occupational Risks (IAPRL), the first reorganization of the autonomous body in two decades. The regulation is published in the Official Gazette of the Principality of Asturias (BOPA) number 207, of October 26, 2026, in section I of General Provisions, and enters into force on the day of its publication.

The text replaces Decree 71/2005, of June 30, which had developed the structure of the body for twenty years and had been modified by Decree 32/2006. The IAPRL is, according to article 2 of the Law of the Principality of Asturias 4/2004, of November 30, an autonomous body with its own legal personality and full capacity to act.

The decree responds to an agreement by the Institute’s Governing Board which, at the proposal of the body’s Management, in a session on November 11, 2025, formulated the proposal for the new structure. The Governing Council approved it at its meeting on October 13, 2026, at the proposal of the Minister of Science, Industry, and Employment. The text is signed in Oviedo by the President of the Principality of Asturias, Adrián Barbón Rodríguez, and by Minister Borja Sánchez García.

Four services and eight sections

Under the dependency of the head of Management, the Institute is organized into four administrative bodies, each with its section-level units:

• General Secretariat: Administration and Personnel Section and Plans and Grants Section.
• Occupational Risks Service: Work Safety Section, Industrial Hygiene Section, and Applied Ergonomics and Psychosociology Section.
• Occupational Health and Preventive Organizations Service: Occupational Medicine Section and Preventive Organizations Section.
• Training, Information, and Dissemination Service: Training and Dissemination Section and Working Conditions Observatory of the Principality of Asturias.

The General Secretariat assumes the direction of common services, human resources management, the draft budget, administrative contracting, and subsidies, in addition to the monitoring of the Occupational Health, Safety, and Environment Plan.

Occupational cancer, asbestos, and registry of delegates

The Occupational Health and Preventive Organizations Service receives explicit competencies in health matters. It must study suspicions of occupational cancer to avoid the under-reporting of professional diseases, in coordination with the health authority of the Principality, and execute health surveillance actions for workers at risk of exposure to asbestos.

It will also assume the management of the Registry of Occupational Risk Prevention Delegates of the autonomous community, the issuance of mandatory reports on the accreditation of external prevention services and auditing entities, and the promotion of the gender perspective and programs aimed at the older working population.

The Training, Information, and Dissemination Service concentrates training, dissemination, road safety at work, programs in the educational field, and the analysis of occupational accident rates in Asturias.

Personnel and companies: continuity until the new list of positions

The sole transitional provision establishes that units and positions with an organic level lower than a service shall continue to exist and maintain their name, structure, and functions, remunerated from the same budget credits, until the resource management instrument adapted to the new structure is approved. Their provisional assignment will be carried out by resolution of the competent department for public employment, until the approval of the new list of job positions.

The first additional provision clarifies that references in the legal system to the suppressed bodies shall be understood as referring to those that assume their competencies. The preamble emphasizes that the regulation does not impose administrative burdens and exclusively affects the internal organization of the Institute.

The change takes immediate effect for companies, external prevention services, auditing entities, and prevention delegates, who from now on will interact with a different structure of services and sections. The reorganization arrives without modifying the historical functions and objectives of the organization, but reorders its resources to adapt it to the social and economic changes in Asturias.

Source: Official Gazette of the Principality of Asturias, no. 207, of October 26, 2026, section I. General Provisions, pp. 1-4 (official reference: 2026-08639).