A major refurbishment programme at Tottenham Court Road means that no Central line services will call at the station until December 2015. Northern trains will stop there as usual.

The work comes ahead of Tottenham Court Road becoming part of the Crossrail route from 2018. This means that the number of people passing through the station each day is set to rise from 150,000 to 200,000.

It also forms part of a £10 billion set of modernisations across the London Underground network.

The main aim of the upgrade is to make the station fully accessible, by installing five lifts to all platforms, as well as eight new escalators. There will also be a new ticket hall, improved CCTV and lighting.

David Waboso, London Underground's capital programmes director, said: “While we try to carry out as much of our improvement works when the Tube is closed, in this case we need a pre-planned closure of the central line platforms due to the vast scale of the station's transformation.”