At busy airports we all accept speed control as the 'norm', and so the final approach speed restriction is only the last of a stream of ATC separation/sequencing tools.
At less busy airfields often no intermediate speed restristion is placed on arrivals, as gaps are such that they're not required. These often resulted in no requirement for a final approach speed restriction to be applied either. Great for the pilot (me), as one could manage the approach hopefully in the most efficient manner.
The above however does create other issues. The lack of predictability to the aerodrome controller in organising departures from a single runway (empty runway time available), has often in my experience resulted in missed departure opportunities, and hence caused ground delay, and consequently less efficient runway usage. For those that don't beleive what range of speeds seem to be flown between 7 and 4, well the radar evidence of the difference is quite staggering between aircraft types, and indeed different operators!
BHX (EGBB) from which I operated until recently was a classic for this, and hence introduced the from '7 to 4' rule to help overcome this issue. Although not immediately visible to the arriving aircraft (especially if no one is ahead of you!), there IS a bigger picture and OVERALL system efficiency and predictability being achieved. As such I'm in full support of the initiative which was introduced
