UK Biobank was established by the Wellcome Trust medical charity, Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Scottish Government and the Northwest Regional Development Agency. It has also had funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and the British Heart Foundation. UK Biobank is hosted by the University of Manchester and supported by the National Health Service (NHS). It works with researchers from a large number of British universities. The medical research project is a non-profit charity and had initial funding of about £62 million.

UK Biobank’s Principal Investigator and Chief Executive is Rory Collins, who is also British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.