It is difficult to comment about your approach to BHX as it very much depends on which runway you approached and at what time of night.
The proximity of Coventry can often have a significant impact on operations approaching RWY33 at BHX. IFR Traffic departing RWY23 from Cov will usually be resricted to 2500' allowing you to descend to 3500' only even if localiser established. The climbout of RWY 23 passes through the 33 approach about 10nm out therefore if traffic departing Cov calls late as they invariably do we cannot give descent until we have 3 nm sep which means you are high on the glide! It is quite often difficult to judge if this situation is going to occur as once we have given a release to the departure of RWY23 the time until it is airborne can vary greatly sometimes 2 or 3 minutes!
Alternatively if you are routing in from the north we may vector you for a shorter final to remain North of the climbout of 23, this would result in about a 6 or 7 mile final although you should have been given descent in time to achieve this!
I also like to use the phrase 'when established descend on the ILS' although I admit I tend only to use it when RT is busy.
Hope this helps!!!