Alex Batty, 17, disappeared while in Spain with his mother and grandfather in Oct 2017 but resurfaced in a mountainous area of southern France last week.

At a family court hearing in Manchester, northwest England, a lawyer representing the local authority in nearby Oldham asked for him to be made a ward of the court in the care of his grandmother, as he had been before he vanished.

Wardship means High Court judges remain his legal guardian to oversee his welfare, provided by his grandmother, Susan Caruana, and the council, until he turns 18.

Media coverage of family court hearings in the UK is normally heavily restricted but judge Sarah Singleton allowed reporting given the wide publicity about his disappearance and reappearance.

“Alex is, perhaps entirely understandably, somewhat fearful of the glare of publicity around his circumstances,” she said.

“There is, it seems to me, to be a legitimate public interest in reporting the outcome of a difficult set of circumstances of a young person.

“He is being supported by his maternal grandmother and Oldham Council to resume a normal life, here.”

The teenager is said to have been living a “nomadic” lifestyle in a “spiritual community” until he approached a delivery driver near Toulouse, who took him to the authorities.

A police investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance is ongoing, the court was told.