New Guardian League Table for 2011
Top 20 or so of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year’s position in brackets):
1 (1) Oxford
2 (2) Cambridge
3 (4) Warwick
4 (3) St Andrews
5 (6) UCL
6 (16) Lancaster
7 (8) Imperial College
8 (5) London School of Economics
9 (10) Loughborough
9 (11) York
11 (12) SOAS
12 (15) Leicester
13 (9) Bath
14 (13) Exeter
15 (7) Edinburgh
15 (18) Sussex
17 (14) Durham
18 (22) Southampton
19 (35) UEA
20 (27) Surrey
21 (26) Nottingham
The overview of the results from the Guardian offers a few additional points about some institutions which appear to be doing better or worse than in previous years:
Britain’s oldest universities still dominate the high rankings, although several have dropped many places from last year. The University of Manchester, which was formed in 2004 from two universities that were established in the 19th Century, has fallen to 51st place out of 118, from 32nd last year. Edinburgh has gone down to 15th place from seventh last year and Bristol has fallen to 33rd from 29th last year. Some universities founded in the 1960s, however, appear to be on the rise. Lancaster has climbed from 16th to sixth this year, the University of East Anglia has risen from 35th to 19th and York has gone from 11th to joint ninth place with Loughborough.
Overall though not huge changes with the exception of Lancaster which has jumped into the top 10 in all three of the most recent UK rankings.
Registrarism 
I was told at one of the Nottingham Talent Roadshow’s that the university is currently writing its next university plan, and that it would welcome input from former students. Here’s my opinion.
The last plan for 2007-10 made no mention of targets for domestic rankings, which many other university plans seem to do (see Exeter, St Andrews, Manchester etc). I would suggest setting up a body to replace the now defunct Performance Indicator Task Group, which reports to the senate/council the university’s performance in things such as newspaper rankings and how to improve if needed.
Certain targets can be set as a good reputational management tool, say being in the top 15 in all tables by 2012, and top 10 by 2015 (shouldnt be too hard as Notts was in the top 10 from 1993-2005)Its all well and good having a healthy bottom line, excellent research income, links with other universities etc, but prospective applicants and researchers do not look at such intangibles. How a university performs in simple metrics such as league tables are treated as a guide to reputation and prestige.
Also another important goal should be to return the entry tariff back to its old level of 430+, although I see that the current plan does state this as an objective.