mediary service under the ISR. 10.15. An intermediary agency is an adoption support agency (ASA) or an adoption agency that provides an intermediary service in accordance with the regulations. See ISR 4.3. 10.16. ‘Appropriate adoption agency’ is defined by section 65(1) of the Act, in relation to an adopted person or to information relating to the adoption, as the agency that placed that person for adoption, or if different, the agency which keeps that 189 person’s adoption records. In a non-agency adoption, the AAA is the local authority to which notice of intention to adopt was given. In some older adoptions, particularly before 1976, there may be no AAA. This might be, for example, where the adoption was arranged privately and no local authority was given notice of intention. In some cases it may prove impossible to establish which agency, if any, was the AAA. 10.17. ‘Identifying information’ is defined in ISR 7.4, for the purposes of regulations 7, 9 and 12 as information which, whether taken on its own or together with information possessed by the applicant, enables the subject, i.e. the subject of the application, to be identified or traced. Who may provide services? 10.18. ISR 3.1 stipulates that an intermediary service under section 98 of the Act may be provided by an ASA or an adoption agency (a local authority or voluntary adoption agency (VAA)). An ASA will need to be registered under Part 2 of the Care Standards Act 2000 to provide these services, and indicate this in its statement of purpose. An adoption agency may choose to provide an intermediary service, although there is no statutory requirement for it to do so. When it does so, it must provide the service in accordance with the requirements of the ISR. A VAA that provides intermediary services is exemp