Emergency and evacuation plan: what art. 20 of the Ley de PRL requires

Contents

• What is the emergency plan?
• Who is required to have one?
• What does it have to include?
• What do you risk if you do not have it?
• How Tranquilia generates it
• Frequently asked questions
• Official sources

What is the emergency plan?

It is the script for what happens when something goes very wrong. Art. 20 LPRL requires the employer to analyse the possible emergency situations and to adopt the necessary measures on first aid, firefighting and evacuation, designating the staff in charge of putting them into practice.

In a small company it can be short and simple; in one with more risk or more people, more detailed. But the logic is the same: anticipate, assign people in charge and check that it works.

Who is required to have one?

Every company with working people. The duty in art. 20 does not wait for a minimum size: as soon as you have staff, you have to have thought about what happens in an emergency and who takes charge.

How far it goes is another matter: an office of three people is not the same as a workshop with machinery and flammable products. The plan is scaled to the real risk.

What does it have to include?

A useful emergency plan sets out:

1. The emergency situations foreseeable in your activity (fire, leak, serious accident).
2. The evacuation routes and the assembly points.
3. The designated staff who are to act (firefighting, first aid, coordinating the evacuation) and how to alert the external services.
4. The means available: extinguishers, first aid kit, alarms.
5. The periodic check that everything works and that people know about it.

It is worth checking from time to time that the measures work, because a plan nobody has rehearsed tends to fail just when it is needed.

What do you risk if you do not have it?

Not having adopted the emergency measures in art. 20 is an infringement in the labour and social security field (orden social), which the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social may classify as serious. And, above all, it is the kind of breach that is paid for dearly if one day a real emergency happens and there were neither signposted exits nor anyone who knew what to do.

We do not give an exact figure because it depends on the seriousness and on the circumstances, but it is one of those duties that costs little to prepare and a great deal to regret if it is missing.

How Tranquilia generates it

Tranquilia prepares the emergency measures plan from your premises, your activity and your workforce, with the people in charge and the courses of action already set out, ready for you to review and communicate. If you are a gestoría (a Spanish administrative and payroll practice), you generate it for each client company.

Frequently asked questions

Does a small office need an emergency plan?

Yes. Art. 20 LPRL does not exempt small offices: any company with workers has to have planned what to do in an emergency. What changes is how extensive the plan is, not the duty.

Is it the same as a self-protection plan?

Not exactly. The self-protection plan is a more demanding instrument that applies to certain activities and capacities under its own specific rules. The emergency measures plan under art. 20 LPRL has to be held by every company with staff, whatever its size.

Do you have to run drills?

The law requires periodic checks that the measures work. In many companies that translates into evacuation drills; in others, into simpler reviews. What matters is that the plan does not stay on paper alone.

Official sources

• BOE — Ley 31/1995 de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales, article 20.
• BOE — RD 39/1997, Reglamento de los Servicios de Prevención.
• Instituto Nacional de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo (INSST).

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General information on legislation. It does not replace advice from a lawyer or an analysis of your particular case. If in doubt, check with your prevention service or with a professional.