BARCLAYS has announced a further 12-month support package for business customers who have been hit by the consequences of foot and mouth disease.

The bank says the new package has been designed to give branch managers more flexibility when working with individual customers to help them return to normal trade in 2002.

Barclays has also joined forces with Business Link to offer rural firms free advice from a personal business adviser.

The bank will meet the fee for the first 10 hours of paid-for advice.

David Irwin, chief executive of the Small Business Service, said: "We are delighted to be able to work with Barclays to provide concrete help and support to businesses in difficulty.

Business Link can offer a wide range of services to help these businesses get back on track."

The Barclays support options include:

Loan repayment deferral, capital and interest, for up to 12 months

Paying interest only, but deferring capital repayments

Extended overdraft facilities for up to a year

Experts advice from Barclays' 'Intensive Care' unit Alastair Camp, managing director for medium business and agriculture at Barclays, said the winter would be very tough for many seasonal businesses.

"As it has been throughout the foot and mouth outbreak, our objective is to be there for our customers," he said.

"With these measures, we hope to ease the immediate financial pressure customers are under and help them prepare for what we hope will be more normal trading conditions next year.

"The indications so far are that the majority of those businesses that were viable before the outbreak will, with continuing support, return to profitability.

"But there will undoubtedly be some businesses failures attributable to the outbreak.."

He added: "Where viability is in question, the provision of further credit with the consequent increase in debt could be unhelpful to the customer."