Atrium Dental’s principal dentist, Matt Golightly, has been treating patients in and around Surrey for three decades. When he eventually went looking for a practice of his own, he chose Camberley quite deliberately. The decision was not about footfall, signage or postcodes — it was about geography drawn around the people he had already been looking after for most of his career.

Thirty years of Surrey, by way of London

Matt qualified from King’s College London — a Russell Group school he chose on the strength of its reputation — and spent his early years deep in the hospital system. He took a house job at King’s, rotated through different departments, then moved to St George’s in Tooting for on-call oral surgery work. It was demanding, formative and, as he puts it, an eye-opener. It also taught him surgical confidence that he still draws on at the chair today.

After his hospital years, Matt moved into general practice, working as an NHS dentist for roughly a decade. It was during that period that he learned the discipline of working efficiently without cutting corners — a value that still defines how Atrium runs its clinical days.

From there came practice ownership. Matt part-owned a practice in Sandhurst before working as an associate in Wokingham, then Farnham. By the late 2010s he was ready for something of his own again.

“I had a bit of an itch to scratch. I wanted to see if I could go it alone. And then I found Atrium.” — Matt Golightly

Why Camberley, specifically

Matt’s choice of Camberley as the home for his practice was not accidental. Sandhurst, Wokingham and Farnham sit roughly around it on the map, and a great many of his long-term patients live somewhere inside that triangle.

“I set up at Atrium in Camberley because it’s central to all of the catchment areas of all the places I’ve ever worked,” says Matt.

The effect of that decision became clear quickly. When the practice eventually opened its doors under his ownership, a striking proportion of the people walking in were people Matt already knew.

“About a third of my patients were previous patients. I’ve got patients now I’ve known thirty years. And I’m still getting patients from thirty years ago coming in going, ‘oh, I found you.’ I tell them — there’s no Golightly dentists in the UK apart from me. Not that hard to find.” — Matt Golightly

For families in Camberley, Frimley, Sandhurst, Bagshot, Lightwater, Yateley and the wider Surrey Heath area, that continuity matters. A long-standing dentist sees your history, knows the work in your mouth, and watches how your teeth change from one decade to the next. It is the opposite of starting over.

The lockdown signing story

Atrium nearly didn’t happen. Matt was due to sign for the practice on 20 March 2020 — three days before the United Kingdom went into its first lockdown. With dentistry effectively shut overnight and the economy in free fall, he pulled out of the deal.

What he did next is one of those details that tells you everything about a person.

“Then I went to work as a factory worker, doing ventilator supplies. Just to keep my sanity, really. I went down to £10.20 an hour overnight, twelve-hour shifts, all through COVID.” — Matt Golightly

By the end of that year, with the worst of the early uncertainty starting to lift, Matt rang his bank and asked the question that had been sitting in the back of his head for nine months: if I still want Atrium, is the deal on? It was. He signed on 11 September 2020 and reopened the practice as principal, in PPE, in a building that was effectively brand new to him.

The first couple of years, by his own admission, were hard. But Atrium grew, the patient base widened, and the team came together. Today the practice looks after thousands of patients across the Camberley and Surrey Heath area, with a clinical team Matt has hand-picked using a simple yardstick: would he be happy to sit in their chair himself.

A family practice, by design

Walk into Atrium today and you will see something that high-street dentistry has been quietly losing for years — proper intergenerational care. Patients Matt treated as teenagers in the 1990s are now bringing their own children for check-ups. Grandparents and grandchildren share appointment days. That family-practice feel is not a marketing line; it is a direct consequence of one dentist staying put in one region for thirty years.

It also shapes who Matt hires. The team at Atrium now includes Ahmed Al-Baiyaa, whose master’s in implant dentistry is helping Matt hand more of the surgical workload to the next generation, and Matt Cottam — a former patient of Matt’s whom he mentored into the profession and later brought into the practice.

“He was my patient. I’ve nurtured him through, and now he works for me.” — Matt Golightly on Matt Cottam

That is unusual. It is also exactly the kind of story you only get when a dentist sticks around long enough to see the next generation rise.

Looking ahead

Matt is not slowing down. He is still actively training — recently completing the IAS Academy Advanced Year in orthodontics, with a diploma in his sights, on top of his existing diploma in aesthetic dentistry from the University of Portsmouth and twenty-plus years of implant work. His ambition for Atrium is unfussy: keep serving the local community, keep growing the team, and eventually pass the practice on to the next generation with his ethos intact.

If you’re looking for a long-standing family dentist in Camberley — or you’ve been Matt’s patient before and would like to find him again — the team would be glad to welcome you. Get in touch with Atrium Dental Camberley to book a check-up or a new-patient consultation.

MEET

Matt Golightly

Principal Dentist · BDS Lond 1993 · GDC 69698

Matt qualified from King's College London in 1993 and spent his first two years in the dental departments at King's College Hospital and St George's, gaining the surgical grounding that still underpins his clinical work today. He has since practised as a general dentist in and around Surrey, eventually founding Atrium Dental in Camberley.

Matt has a particular interest in dental implants and orthodontics alongside general dentistry. He trained in implants at the Royal College of Surgeons and has been placing them for over twenty years. More recently he completed the IAS Academy Advanced Year course in orthodontics and is working toward the full diploma. He was also an early adopter of digital dentistry, including the CEREC same-day crown system that Atrium still uses today.

His calm, down-to-earth manner makes him a natural with anxious patients and children. Outside of clinical hours, Matt donates his time and the practice facilities to The Hope Hub, providing emergency dental care for people experiencing homelessness in Surrey Heath and surrounding areas. That community work, combined with his commitment to accessible, high-quality dentistry for the whole community, earned him the Camberley Hero Award in 2022.