Chris,
All of the ASOS stations out here, and most of the AWOS ones, report precip this way. Unless a station malfunctions they all automatically report regularly. I can’t say I’ve checked many of the UK obs, but if they’re anything like I’ve seen out of Canada then I know what you mean. Here in the States we even have the temp/dew reported in tenths of a degree Celcius so that there is an accurate conversion to whole degrees Fahrenheit.