Certainly Oxford Brookes is making a great name for itself as a good, solid university.
As for UWE as stated above, they do have some very good departments. (I suppose as with all universities, some particularly poor ones too).
You'll find a substantial number of biomedical scientists in the south west have graduated from UWE (The only example I can give). In the South West UWE is increasingly seen as a decent university, more so than Plymouth.
I went to Kent so I can't comment further than that!