Hy HD ,how are you? Indeed,I've got an answer in the ATCO section ,somehow incomplete,but I wanted to hear also pilots view about this,and also from other areas than GB FIR.
In other parts of the world, at t/d I ask to descent,receive clearance to descent to fL..,then ,short of IAF I'm being transfered to APP.No 'clearance limit' indicated by the controller untill then,so we had some cases when pilots flew past the IAF,on the 'expected' STAR ,before actually receiving the clearance to do it.
When I told them they should've hold,they asked me why? where it says so? It's nothing mentioned on the charts,so...
Brgds...Alex