I've been offline for a while, thank you for all the responses. It's a small airfield with the radio operator sat in the clubhouse area. They have a view of the runway and the approach. When I called final, I could clearly see the aircraft in front, who had just touched down, and I was given the runway information, surface wind etc etc. I'd imagine, however, that in the event of the 'controller' not deeming it safe for me to land, he would've told me to go around? I wasn't told to 'land after' or anything like that, and as I said, I wouldn't have let the wheels touch the ground had the aircraft not called vacated by the time I was coming over the threshold. @Maoraigh1 . it is indeed this one airfield I've been learning at. Moving on to cross country and navigation for my next lesson.