Standard PhpBB behavior , its by design so you can jump back to the board index… again, there is an obvious link to that too, but for some reason, this is how it is.
I think it was my direct request in these very forums that resulted in Steinberg placing the link up at the top of the page (the process previously involving a multi-page click-a-rama), so I may take extremely personally any disparaging of the said link, and might ask any potential disparagers if they really have a life and if so to focus a bit more on that perhaps.
On the other hand, I may be mistaken and actually had nothing to do with the issue raised by OP, and if that’s the case I heartily applaud their efforts on our behalf to improve our forum experiences! How kind and thoughtful!