Also this week, asbestos taskforce head Andrew Kefford revealed that the former Aranda childcare building that also contained Mr Fluffy asbestos was sold in June and would be demolished by the new owners.

The Bindel Street building next to Aranda primary school, which was closed as a child care centre in 2014 after asbestos fibres were discovered, sold for $1.825 million to an interstate investor.

Knight Frank agent Daniel McGrath said there were five bidders. The new owner planned to build a new childcare centre in place of the contaminated building. The advertisement for the property made no mention of its Fluffy status, but said the existing childcare centre is "in need of demolition". Mr McGrath said there was full disclosure in the contract.

While the childcare centre was part of the clean-up of asbestos insulation in the late 1980s, the material was never cleaned from the roof of the corner building at the Ainslie shops, which has Edgar's Inn in the ground-floor space below. The first floor flat above Edgar's has had a prohibition notice on it since 2014.

Building owner Jeff Darwin said he had one quote from an asbestos removalist and was waiting for more in the next couple of weeks before the clean-up could begin.

He wanted to get the asbestos cleared as soon as possible, but acknowledged it would bring major disruption to the businesses - especially to Edgar's Inn which would have to close for at least part of the work.

The internal walls, ceilings, cornices, timber beams and the roof of the first-floor building above Edgar's would be removed to clean the asbestos, leaving only the perimeter walls. Once the loose insulation was gone, every surface must be cleaned, and then sprayed to seal remaining fibres.

Mr Darwin said there were no plans to clean wall cavities in the ground floor of the buildings, but that would be reassessed once the first floor was stripped and cleaned.

Mr Darwin's building is No 1. But in a report released in March the asbestos was found to have migrated into the the ceilings of the neighbouring buildings, Nos 3 and 5, owned by the Xyrakis family. Those ceilings will also be cleaned and Mr Darwin and Mr Xyrakis are organising the removal and clean-up together.

Mr Darwin said they had heritage approval to replace the tiled roofs with a Colorbond roof - and the roof of No 7 might also be replaced, given the buildings are connected.

While work had the potential to be "very disruptive", much of the clean-up would be done inside a bubble over the first-floor roof, and the aim was to minimise disruption to the businesses below, Mr Darwin said.

"We're hoping to have it done as soon as possible," he said. "We're hoping to have the new roof on by spring."

The clean-up is only a temporary solution, with asbestos experts recommending that buildings 1 and 3 be demolished . No-one has said when that will happen, but Work Safety Commissioner Greg Jones said in March he anticipated demolition within three to five years.

More than 1000 homes that contained the loose-fill asbestos installed by a contractor colloquially known as Mr Fluffy during the 1970s are being demolished. The homes were cleaned in the late 1980s, but fibres were discovered remaining in walls and sub-floors. The Ainslie building was not part of the clean-up because it was a commercial building.