Authorities in France reportedly missed an opportunity to return Alex Batty to Oldham after he tried to enrol at a school in the south of the country last month.

According to French publication La Depeche Du Midi, a regional newspaper in the south-west of France, the 17-year-old could not provide any identity papers when he attempted to register for a school.

It also reported that Alex was taken to the Gendarmerie in Quillan, the nearest town to the remote farmhouse where he had been living with his grandfather David Batty - who died six months ago.

Alex, who was a pupil at Hathershaw College, went on a pre-arranged trip flying to Malaga in September 2017 with his mum, Melanie Batty, who did not have parental guardianship of Alex - and her father, to a villa in the Benahavis area near Marbella.

For the last six years the teenager had been living in a "nomadic spiritual community" with his mother, before telling a lorry driver who saw him walking down a rural road that he "needs a future".

La Depeche Du Midi reported: "According to our sources, the young man of 17 years should have been the subject of an investigation in the month of November.

"His presence was established in the district of Quillan, in the department of Aude, at that time.

"Alex Batty wanted to enrol in a school in the town to take courses.

"Having no identity document on him, the young Englishman was entrusted to the police."

It continued: "The police apparently tried to contact the British authorities.

"It was then, according to our information, there was a 'glitch' which did not allow the report to be followed up.

"The collaboration would have made it possible to establish a link between the presence of Alex Batty in Quillan and the missing persons alert seven years earlier in England."

According to French authorities, Alex was found on Wednesday (December 13) and on Thursday night spoke on a video call to his grandmother, and guardian, Susan Caruana, who is "content" that it is Alex.