Alex Batty latest LIVE as GMP hold press conference as he returns to UK

Greater Manchester Police are holding a press conference as Alex Batty returns to the UK. The teenager from Oldham who went missing in 2017 when he was 11 years old was found in France earlier this week and is expected to be reunited with his grandmother.

French authorities announced today (December 16) that the 17-year-old would be ‘accompanied by members of the British police services' on a flight back to the UK. He is then expected to be transferred on to his grandmother’s house.

Alex went missing six years ago after going on a family holiday to Spain with his mother Melanie and grandad David. His grandmother - and legal guardian - Susan Caruana, said she believed her ex-partner and daughter had run away because they wanted Alex to have an 'alternative lifestyle'.

READ MORE: 'He's coming home': Grandmother's joy as missing Alex Batty is found in France

READ MORE: Alex Batty: Missing boy 'wanted to see grandmother and have a normal future'

In the early hours of Wednesday (December 13, the teenager was found walking alone near the city of Toulouse by student Fabien Accidini. Alex told French officials he had been hiking in nearby mountains for more than four days in an attempt to return to England.

He had been living as part of a nomadic 'spiritual community' and had spent time in Morocco and the Pyrenees but decided the lifestyle 'had to stop' when his mother revealed plans to go to Finland, according to the French prosecutor in Toulouse.

Antoine Leroy, the Toulouse deputy prosecutor, said Alex was finally expected to make an emotional return home to Oldham ‘this weekend’. On Saturday (December 16), he was still in the care of French social services, as gendarmes tried to find his mother.

The M.E.N. has learned