NorthSouth,
Not a controller, but a pilot. What you have described is a pretty normal approach into SOU. A number of years ago it was fairly normal for flights to make a straight in approach onto runway 20, with this approach taking the aircraft outside of controlled airspace and making its descent and approach under a radar advisory service until rejoining controlled airspace inside SOU zone.
As I understand things, a couple of years ago, this practice was curtailed, especially for Flybe aircraft. I don't know if this was in response to ATC requirements or as a result of any airprox, but we are now no longer able to accept routings into SOU which take us outside of controlled airspace. SOU zone is a fairly small chunk of airspace and it sits in a very busy part of the world with a mixture of commercial training traffic, GA flyers and military activity surrounding it.
The 'normal' vectoring now takes us towards the SAM VOR (sitting on the airfield near the 20 threshold) at approx 7000' and then descending as you describe at a distance of 5 miles or so from the field in a left hand orbit to join the final approach track at approx 8 miles. It adds a few more minutes to the arrival, but allows the flight to remain inside controlled airspace at all times, and thus maintain the benefits of a full ATC control service.