If lets say you had 50 working instructions....Would you necessarily have to have a Risk Assessment for each...Or could you do the risk Assessment by working activity......i.e. some working activity i.e. loading trailers, may include several separate Working Instructions....so could you have a RA simply for the overall Activity????

Yes you can. We do.

This is something I’m thinking about at the moment. We’re a laboratory based biological research company. Our chemists have some 20 odd SOP’s which are to all intents and purposes risk assessments. Our biologists have just over twice as many covering the use of different pieces of kit and different techniques.
I see a risk assessment is a management tool, but have been a bit slow in getting this idea across so now I’m considering looking through all these documents and summing the controls to see if I can just get a list of control measures that our staff need to know about without having to read all the documents that apply to them each year as we currently do. So a biologist who does not use a piece of equipment currently does not read the risk assessment relating to that piece of kit. But if the controls are the same for all similar pieces of equipment just reminding themselves of the controls each year should be enough.
The chemists are a bit different (they always are) in that their risks are specific for each reaction they do so they all need to know about (and be reminded about) the controls in place for each reaction say for example a reaction releasing cyanide needs a bit more care then one that does not.
Do others have similar processes where line management arrange for risk assessment to be annually reviewed and then only require staff to read a summary of the control measures since that’s what we really need them to focus on.

We are carrying out a review of our risk assessment process at the moment and the process I am suggesting is that for any new task we identify the hazards and assess the risks using a dynamic risk assessment form, one page document. We then assess the risks as we are writing the SOP. We then carry out any reviews using both documents. The area will then have a holistic risk assessment.

?

a "work instruction" is only one kind of control measure - and well down the heirarchy.

what's the difference?

In my view RA's are not WSSW [or whatever people call them nowadays] and VV but both can be developed together as U progress with one being the risk evaluator and the other used to undertake the work noting that time and again I have seen documents that are so muddled up between the 2 areas that its terribly confusing no matter how many pages they consist of nor how pretty they are ------ and as started only significant risk in any given circumstance needs to be evaluated however U do not know what is significant until its evaluated!

also note that if U end up in court U will need lots of paper as proof that U are managing

with all due respect it appears that yet again the tail [QA] is wagging the dog [H&S] ---- if management will listen try too persuade them that QA should amend its systems to account for the law and proper H&S and move on from there

best of luck