At this late hour I haven't been able to access the right charts, but I expect that holding at A050 would have been outside CTA. I expect a controller would have had the aircraft on radar and been providing a radar service. The simple facts are that enroute ATC are limited in their knowledge of what aircraft are going to do on approaches to an aerodrome in G airspace. If the captain decides to extend the downwind leg in a hold, who is the controller to question the actions. We are not trained in the details of each type of approach for all the aerodromes in our "G" airspace and whether the pilot intends to do an NDB approach or an OmniDME or whatever, his broadcasts on air would let other pilots know what he was doing, give the controller some idea of what the pilot is intending and puts the intentions on tape for later use if necessary. A bit oversimplified, but G airspace means you do what you want. We are not required to know DAPS and in most cases couldn't tell you where the initial approach fix/point is for a particular type of approach so how would a controller be expected to comment on such things. The aircraft certainly don't get rerouted in the TAAATS system to indicate the ammended tracking for the various approaches(it can be for GPS waypoints, but the system doesn't have them all and the second point is sometimes missing from the system maps(so how accurate is the reroute anyway).
Unfortunately my response reminds me of another tragic issue being discussed at the moment and although I don't have anywhere near all the facts, it is scary that through lack of understanding of certain aspects of what we do, what our training covers, what our obligations are and how the system works, certain parties and probably the media are going to hang someone out to dry.