'Ceiling' used to be limiting at some French airfields before the level playing field of PANS Ops & EU OPs. It disappeared many years ago. Perhaps Alex85 was remembering those days. Tower may have a cloud base recorder display, but that is over the runway and not at DA point. Hence it is not limiting, as cloud base is a fickle item. Of course it would be prudent to anticipate a GA and plan accordingly.
It was irritating, at some pedantic airfields, where CAT 1,2,3 were all available, but ATC declared the category based on RVR/VIS. They're giving overcast 003 & 1500m, so CAT 1. Like I said, and LTN was a classic case, the valley before the threshold of RW08 & 26 would suck the cloud down and give a lower base than over the airfield. UK was smarter and used to use common sense, so sometimes 300' would also trigger LVO's because they knew that guys would request it for confidence. Of course, traffic flow was taken into account. If I hear the ATIS was giving dodgy weather and not LVO, then a radio call ahead could often have CAT2/3 in place for our arrival at smaller airfields.