A British 17-year-old found in France six years after going missing in Spain is to return home to England in the coming days, British and French authorities said on Friday.

Alex Batty, originally from the northern English city of Oldham, was picked up by a driver in a mountainous area in southern France, with checks by French and British police confirming his identity.

Police have said they suspect his mother Melanie Batty, who did not have parental guardianship, and grandfather David Batty of abducting him in 2017 when he was 11, under the pretense of going on holiday in Spain. They then lived in alternative lifestyle communes in Spain and subsequently the French Pyrenees.

"Our priority is to get him back to the UK and getting back to his family in Oldham as soon as possible... I expect it to happen over the next few days," Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes of Greater Manchester Police told reporters.

  This undated photo issued by Greater Manchester Police on Thursday, 2023 shows missing British schoolboy Alex Batty. AP

His grandmother Susan Caruana, who according to British media reports is his legal guardian, has expressed delight over his discovery.

"We are waiting for the grandmother to come and get him. We are waiting to set up repatriation with the British," public prosecutor for the Toulouse region Samuel Vuelta-Simon told AFP. "He is in a safe place. Social services have taken care of him," he added, without specifying Alex Batty's exact location.

Some British media reports however suggested the grandmother may be too frail to travel.

Alternative communities

The prosecutor added that French authorities were in close contact with the British police to organise the repatriation, emphasising there was no doubt over the boy's identity.

Alex Batty was last seen in Spain on Oct.8, 2017, the day he and his mother and grandfather were expected to return home from the family holiday.

Susan Caruana has said she believed Alex's mother and grandfather had taken him to live with a spiritual community to seek an alternative lifestyle without traditional education.

"They didn't want him to go to school. They don't believe in mainstream school," Susan Caruana told The Times of London.

"I spoke to him this afternoon and it is definitely him. I was speaking to a boy when he was with us and now I'm speaking to a man.

"It's quite unbelievable when you don't know if somebody's dead or alive."

There was no immediate information on the whereabouts of the mother and grandfather, who British media reported are wanted in connection with the disappearance.

Found by delivery driver

The Depeche du Midi regional newspaper said Batty had been found by a student named Fabien Accidini after the youngster had been wandering for some four days in the mountainous area.

Accidini, who delivers medicines to pharmacies in the area, said it was raining hard when he picked up Alex Batty and he eventually told his story. "He said that his mother had kidnapped him when he was around 12," the student told La Depeche. "Since then, he had lived in Spain in a luxury house with around 10 people. He would have arrived in France around 2021."

He had lived with his mother in a "spiritual community" in France and had "no animosity towards her but wanted to go back to his grandmother," Accidini said.

La Depeche said he had lived in France with his mother and grandfather in a "nomadic community" in the nearby Aude and Ariege departments.

Greater Manchester Police said that at the time of his disappearance an investigation was launched "but despite extensive enquiries, and assistance from Spanish authorities, Alex remained missing." They acknowledged that aspects of the case remained unclear.

"We still have some work to do in establishing the full circumstances surrounding his disappearance and where he has been in all those years," said Sykes. He said that Alex had spoken to his grandmother on video call on Thursday night.

"Whilst she is content that this is indeed Alex, we obviously have further checks to do when he returns to the United Kingdom," he added.

Agence France-Presse